


Delirium

by Silberias



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen, again I was young and stupid and I am sorry, condensed from 41 chapters to 21, hopefully you enjoy it, kakashi is an anxiety ball, next generation fic before Boruto was even a glimmer in anybody's eye, non-linear timeline, the 2nd person makes it a little bit of a guessing game on who exactly the POV is, written in close 2nd person because I was young and stupid, yes some of the characters have -isms with how they talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 19:05:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 68,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16414154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: Kakashi and Sakura's eldest son suffers from a "Can-do" attitude. He gets it from both his parents. A story composed of glimpses of a family and how they got there.





	1. Akihito Returns / Rules and Masks

The first thing you notice when you visit the Hatakes is that there is a phrase carved again and again and again on the door frame. It's their family _nindo_ , and you don't have to know any one of them for very long before you learn what it is. Those who abandon their mission are scum, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than scum. The second thing you notice are the eight pairs of shoes by the door, but that's if you're looking at your own feet to take off your shoes. If you're looking up and around you notice what seems to be a hat rack, but it has nine rows. Eight of them are occupied with every sort of mask in every color imaginable (save for one nearest the door, it has only blue and black masks) on the pegs. The ninth row is empty.

As you move into the kitchen you'll see three women, and a boy of no more than ten, standing and chopping vegetables for what looks to be a veritable feast. The shortest of the women has pink hair which is just beginning to show the silvery threads of her age, and her laugh lines around her mouth and eyes are deep. Another pinkette, wielding a wicked looking knife, stands next to her and dices onions. Her eyes are coal compared to her counterpart's green. The third, barely a teenager, stands with determination as she faces a mountain of carrots. Her short silver hair is no indicator of her age, and it stands up and away from her head at a thirty degree angle. The little boy, wearing his forehead protector and treating dinner as if it were a mission or a training assignment from his sensei, shares his sister's grey hair but his eyes are an innocent green. His job is to tell his mother when the water boils and it is very important to him because there are four different pots he has to watch.

It shouldn't—but it will—startle you to see the odd tan-lines on their faces. Halfway down the nose, bisecting the cheeks, a bright line divided their faces. If they didn't before, the masks in the hallway make sense.

If you pass through the kitchen and out to their living room you'll see an older man in his mid-fifties, although he looks like he's in his mid-forties (don't ask his wife about their age difference, she's touchy that he doesn't show his age through his hair), with his feet resting on the rising and falling shoulder-blades of a young man who could only be his son. The elder is reading a book you've seen him with before, and the younger is doing his pushups extremely slowly for the same reason—he is reading a similar book propped open just under his face. Save for the scars and lines on the elder's face you wouldn't be able to tell one from the other as their spiky silver hair refused to budge an inch from it's typical thirty degrees.

Outside in the backyard, you'll hear the sounds of a furious argument about strategy between two teenagers who aren't twins but are of course siblings. They have a shogi board laid out between them and are at an impasse. Both have pink hair and green eyes and look fit to be tied. No one in the village can match their brilliance save perhaps each other.

You'll quickly do some math, because you're a ninja, and come up short. You've missed something. There were eight shoes and nine pegs, four people in the kitchen, two in the living room, and two outside. The ninth is missing. That's when the man with his feet propped up will look up and away from his book and gaze stolidly across the room, seeing through you as you stand puzzled.

So you turn.

And there is your face, at sixteen, your silver hair looking distinctly put out after what could only have been a fierce campaign against it from your mother, your coal eyes are lazy and happy above the red mask. Your arm is confidently flexed up into the frame, a fresh ANBU tattoo—so new that it is still crimson at the edges—stamped across your bicep. You remember you were grinning under your mask that day.

You turn back.

Your father still doesn't see you, but he _does_ see you, he has to, because he and your mother chose that picture because they knew you, they knew you went out obeying the family _nindo,_ and your own. They understood you and loved you, and kept your place in their hearts warm. It's why you're here, at the Hatakes. Because you _are_ a Hatake. And you want one thing, and one thing only, something which will make your brother fall flat on his face, something which will make your father drop his book. Something which will make knives clatter to the floor in the kitchen.

"Daddy?"

* * *

You wake up.

There's a beeping machine too close to your ear and it makes your head twinge in an awful way. What did Sensei _feed_ you? But there is no bar in your recollection, no bill for your tab, and you would surely remember those—your father skips out on bills enough for you to know when to know when there's one coming. Opening your eyes further you see the darkened form of one of your ANBU teammates, with a badger face. It's not him of course—the book was a dead give-away—it's your father making sure you woke up. Your mother would have his head if he didn't. He might be getting on in years, retired from active duty, but there had yet to be born a ninja greater than him. Getting into the special hospital for the black ops would be nothing for your father, let alone impersonating an ANBU.

You remember now. The battle. Whisking in front of the team medic to save his life. Two shuriken to your chest, five wicked looking throwing needles to your good arm—where the medic's face was a millisecond before. Whirling into action with a dozen clones to engage the enemy and _end_ them. You remember hand-to-hand which would have made Lee-sensei proud. Collapsing backwards only when everyone on your team gives the okay-go signal. The four _nindo_ which were threatened by the altercation have been preserved. The village's—never abandon a mission. The family's—never abandon a comrade. Sensei's—never allow injury to overcome you. Yours—never have others have to pay for your fuck up.

The poison had been a slow acting one, but your mother had noticed the instant you walked in the door delirious. But that was according to her. She always watched you like a hawk when you were young, having a major freak out on average once a week. And if those freak outs were merited, well, you don't like to think you couldn't have handled it. Because you could have. You totally could have.

After the battle you'd picked yourself up, ordering the medic to check the team for injuries before they moved out. You went to the body of the man who thought you looked better as a porcupine and yanked out the needles from your arm. It was a little stiff, but nothing a few hundred pushups would have fixed at home. Then the world had gotten a little fuzzier for you.

Your father is still doing admirably at pretending to sleep, when in reality he is indulging in a worry much deeper than your mother's. Mother was never in ANBU, whereas your father was for years. He could care less that you are awake, he cares that you keep breathing.

Breathing had been a bit harder, but that could have been explained by the smoke bombs the enemy had thrown before the battle, coupled with your two masks. One of them cloth and covering the lily white lower half of your face, and the other the painted porcelain of ANBU. The needles clattered to the ground next to their former owner, and your muscles felt a bit colder as you stood than they should have considering the battle you'd just ended. It didn't seem to matter at the time.

You gave the team the order to move out as you pulled out the book the Nanadaime, Naruto, gave you for your birthday. It was a collection of short stories by the author of your father's books. For some reason they had been incredibly moving, from hilarious to terribly sad. On the third day of traveling homeward you couldn't remember where home was, so you elected to take up the rear—you could keep a better eye on your teammates that way. The next morning you woke up early and wandered away from camp. Your teammates didn't find you for seven hours, in which time you were showing the full affects of the poison. Which meant you looked fine to them and had a wonderful excuse of scouting ahead to pacify them.

Scouting turned, later that day, into watching butterflies which quickly turned into homesickness which turned into leading a forced march home to see your family. That was how your mother noticed you'd been poisoned, too. You were black ops, ANBU, and you didn't lead forced marches homeward to see your _family_ of all people. If you hadn't been poisoned you wouldn't have called your father "Daddy," and would have been able to avoid Mother's quickly applied frying pan to the back of your head, something to put you out of your misery for the time being.

You totally could have.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

* * *

You decide for Kakashi that, since he has no clan colors and no clan symbol, a reversal of your clan colors will suffice. As for iconography, the man has long established who he is because of his heavily covered face, and that covered face matters a lot to him. You know because you _did_ catch his attention when you dressed up as him for Halloween three years ago. Your hair had been perfect—well, as perfect as colored Halloween hairspray could make it—in it's extreme thirty degree angle, and you had even put a fake scar over your left eye. You would have included the scar which extended from the side of his jaw down onto his throat, but you didn't know he had that at the time. He has a lot of scars you wish you could have healed, even when he teases you about how old you were when he got them. Well, especially then because you give him a friendly nudge which, if he's unprepared, will send him flying a few feet.

You originally wanted to surprise him at the wedding by wearing a white mask to contrast his (undoubtedly) black one, but that seemed like too much of a shock to the man on what would be a traumatic day for the introvert. Eighteen guests and he almost had a panic attack when Naruto wanted them to invite Gaara's siblings as well as the Kazekage. Seriously, you sometimes wonder how he used to buy groceries when he didn't have your hand to crush through the store. Despite his outward appearance of a laidback, constantly tardy man...you have been dating him since Christmas two years back. You know of the meticulously kept weapons drawer where his kunai are organized. And boy do you mean _Organized_. They are organized by:

1, their maker. Yes, you have counted them to check, all eighteen Konoha-based manufacturers, seven lines from the Land of Fire, two radically different brands from the village of Mist (four cutting edges versus two, with serration variants for both), eight legendary models from weapons-hermitages scattered across the world, and one brand used exclusively by ANBU.

2, age. New, newish, used-ish, used, repaired, destroyed-beyond-all-hope-of-repair. New kunai were set at the back, alongside, but not touching, the broken ones (how one _broke_ a kunai was difficult to manage, why one would _keep_ broken kunai is beyond you. Of course you have no room to speak, for Kakashi has never once to this day mentioned your collection of shredded, ripped, melted and/or disfigured gloves). Newish ones go on the left, and the rest of them proceed all the way across the box after them.

3, material. Steel, blued steel, stainless steel, and katana-quality steel. You will concede that it's important to know the limits of a material and to know how it will be affected by the various climates one might travel to during one's career. But you think, and have told your fiancé, that this particular effort is a tad on the extreme side. He doesn't see your point, just like he didn't see your point of buying him a brush a year or so back.

And finally 4, general use. Even you know there's a difference in wear&tear between 'kunai to the face' to 'kunai to the liver' to 'kunai to pin someone's ass to a tree,' it's elementary Academy stuff. Most people you know have forgotten the finer points of weapons theory if not all of it. Your boyfriend not only _remembers_ weapons theory, but sets his nonexistent watch by it.

You would have, of course, not known all the finer points of this freakish organizational system if you hadn't also unearthed the guide to the box when you were organizing the man's desk. You had been doing him a favor, but had only watched in horror when he body-checked you away from it and began re-muddling it with a muttered, "it's supposed to be organized like this." It took awhile to stop having nightmares of what the man called "organization." He could block any taijutsu attack from any genin or chunin you've ever met—while _reading_ —save perhaps Lee, and for all the gods' sakes the _weapons drawer_ , but his desk? Some things you'd unearthed likely hadn't seen the light of day since before you'd graduated the Academy.

Like the lower half of his face, for instance. Kakashi's tan lines on his face were hilarious when examined in daylight. Only the top of his right cheek, his right eyebrow, and right eyelid are tanned. Compared to the left side of his face, they are just a tad darker in your estimation. But the lower half of his face…You'd barely kept from giggling outright when you'd first seen it. In twenty years your face will probably look a bit like his, though, and you won't be laughing _then_.

You decide on a green mask which goes with your eyes (too much red was going to be out if the clan symbol was to be a red circle on a white field). Kakashi will get used to the new rules, or you'll just have to change his mind with a face full of hot soup. Would his hair yield to gravity when weighed down with miso?

Worth a try, although he will probably move faster than you can throw the pot.

* * *

You know that Sakura has long decided that at this point in your relationship that you wear your masks because it's expected of you. You have a reason, but it seems so distant now that sometimes you wake up and don't remember it for a few moments. The two of you are getting married in a few months, a fact which chafes you in a way you hadn't expected. You _want_ to be married, to come home to a second pair of shoes and the smell of someone else's take-out preferences. Or cooking, that would be nice too, but Sakura isn't quite that at home with domesticity yet. You wouldn't wish for her to be different, it's just a fact of life that she is more ninja than civilian, more warrior than housewife. You are surprised, therefore, to come home this particular evening to see a familiar size seven pair of shoes sitting where yours usually do.

Sakura is bustling around in your kitchen, fiddling with miso. You appreciate it, the cold spring has sapped all the heat from your face even below your mask. She looks up at you and smiles broadly, a weird scarf wrapped around her neck. You smile back at her, not removing your mask. You only take it off when you're in your own bedroom. Her smile grows broader, her left hand snatching up at the fabric wrapped around her neck. _A mask_. She has a dappled jade and emerald green mask on her face now. You stand puzzled, staring at your fiancé and her odd get-up. The woman knows what colors look good on her, you'll give her that, but why is she doing a restaging of that Halloween costume? She _has_ your attention already…

"Kakashi?"

"Yes?"

"You need to take your mask off inside. Just like your shoes, it's something you wear outside. This is home. I _know_ you take it off in your room, even when I'm not there." Your blank look prompts her to take her mask down—she scratches her face in an adorable way which makes you remember when you trained your face to tolerate a constant covering—and gesture to herself in a "well duh," manner. Ah, _ninja._

"Is this necessary to get dinner?" you deadpan, not bothering to hope she won't slug you a good one. Because no matter your answer you know you'll get slugged. Sakura smiles evilly.

"This is necessary for me to move in with you next week."

You're not such the natural born strategist that Shikamaru is, your strategic mind has been born of constant hard work on your part, but even so her words have your mind racing in a million different directions to figure out what to do in response to your semi-violent girlfriend who may or may not be contemplating facemurder with that lovely smelling miso. You wouldn't put it past her, much less put it past her to try it while you're trying to strategize on the fly. To avoid said facemurder as well as have that much craved domestic presence in the house, you can only come to one conclusion—the one you knew you would come to as soon as those words were out of her mouth.

Your mask is off faster than Obito's eye can typically copy jutsu.

She sniffs and you're relieved—perhaps you were wrong about getting slu-

 _Ow_.

"Kakashi, you're handsome and your poor face has been covered up constantly for how many years? Twenty? You know, you needed to see reason at some point!"

Yes, yes, your girlfriend certainly is one of those semi-violent types.


	2. The Near Death of Sharingan no Kakashi / Cold Brothers

You remember the day that Kakashi-sensei nearly died.

It was sunny and you were sitting in one of the meadows just outside of your neighborhood, and there was only the tiniest stirring of a breeze. Enough of one to keep it from being tediously hot, little enough to not be troublesome. Ino had your head in her lap, running her fingers through your hair in an absent rhythm as she sunned herself—you never tell her, because you told her once and that would be enough coming from you, but she looks absolutely beautiful like this. Leaves stirred in the trees surrounding the sunlit space, but you didn't pay them mind until you noticed that the leaves were moving in streaks, against the breezes. There were ninja chasing each other about in those trees. You didn't much care, but you're dating a gossiper and you didn't feel like getting yelled at or shaken that day, besides, trapping your girlfriend in a shadow possession jutsu just doesn't feel right somehow.

You shifted the tiniest amount to perhaps alert Ino to the presence of the shinobi in the trees when a hundred yards away the Copy Nin popped into existence. You wonder why he bothers with stealth sometimes, that smoke cloud and flurry of leaves was probably seen in Mist sometimes. But he was bunched up, like he was fighting, as he faced an as yet unseen enemy. You waited to see who Kakashi was fighting, but for a long time no one appeared.

So there was really no reason why he should have been as tense as he was, and his book was nowhere in sight. It was odd that there should be a fight in broad daylight inside the village walls, but that turned your head away from disbelief and towards inquiring. This was serious then, and your brilliant mind began to cycle through the probable causes of the disturbance.

You needn't have.

The Godaime appeared within moments, literally crackling with anger. You could go into detail of her appearance, but Ino might beat you up for even cataloguing her presence. What a drag. The words exchanged at that distance shouldn't have been audible either, but they were. Damn. Of all the things you never thought you needed or wanted to hear. If you had had the will to move from your comfortable spot on Ino's lap you would have covered your ears.

The cause of the altercation seemed to be something which involved Kakashi-sensei's former—and the Godaime's current—student and the Copy Nin. Something boring like he'd asked the girl out and then stood her up in favor of obeying his Hokage's orders to go on a mission. Apparently verbage including emasculation and dismemberment was no reason to take a mission if it was going to involve standing up Sakura. You really wished you weren't hearing this, but Ino wasn't going to be moving anytime soon, you knew that. She could hear this scene just as well as you could—maybe better, she's a gossip—and her soothing stroking of your hair turned to still fingers in rumpled hair. It's a pain to thread your own fingers through your hair so you decide to wait it out, knowing it's not the same if you do it, and it's also why you let your girlfriend do it—it's her job and she would get back to it presently. Or you would just sulk for a time, like you had. Those who waited were rewarded, your mother always said. How she ended up married to a Nara is beyond you, but there always had to be conundrums for a genius like you to crack.

The two shinobi were lightning fast as they fought it out, with the Godaime getting more and more furious as her mind sought out all of the connotations which you immediately thought of when she'd appeared and started yelling. You thought of the former connection between the two of them—irrelevant, there were no laws in Konoha forbidding the relationship, only social mores obeyed usually only by civilians. You thought of the age difference, and really the Godaime was not one to talk these days, getting over her heartbreak (finally, troublesome woman) of decades and chasing around a very unreceptive Iruka. You tried to help him out once, you really had. You had even gone to the trouble of finding his file and leaving it conspicuously on her desk once, in which it was listed that the man was _gay_ , and had the hots for Gai-sensei (a fact which still makes you shudder when you see the happy, scarred Chuunin). Tsunade had promptly ignored the file and asked her assistant to put it away, a calculating look in her eyes. You thought of Kakashi kind of going behind Tsunade's back in regard to a woman the Hokage thought of as a daughter of some sort, but wasn't that what all boyfriends did? You'd even done it, shirking talking to Ino's father for a good year into your relationship. The man was a ninja, you had thought he would have noticed his daughter, who he doted on, sneaking out all the time, day and night, with his best friend's son.

You thought of many things and none of them really stood up to any close scrutiny other than maybe Kakashi should, really, have spoken up to both Tsunade and Sakura when he'd been forced into taking the mission. You know personally that you can't have it both ways—the life you live as a ninja and the life you try to live as a civilian—without making a few allowances between them. Yes, Ino was troublesome and very much not fitting into the simple plan of your life, but she was a concession you made because of what you, Shikamaru, wanted. Kakashi would need to figure out what he, Kakashi, wanted to learn to make concessions based on that. Take a mission scroll or take his girlfriend out was apparently the first one he would need to make peace with. You aren't sure it takes a genius to figure out what to do, but there is strong evidence in front of you that it just might.

The fighting was starting to really be a drag, and you went so far as to get up to explain things to the two elder ninja. When Sakura appeared between her two mentors, one a boyfriend and the other a mother, you scowled. You went to all that effort of standing up, with your hair down and sticking in funny angles (it wouldn't do to gain a reputation of hairstyle of any other person in the village other than yourself, thankyouverymuch), and everything, when you needn't have.

What a drag. You should have known you wouldn't need to, because now there was a psychopath, a sadist, and a masochist on the mini field of battle in front of you. They would work it out on their own.

* * *

Of course since the world existed to throw wrenches in your plans, you _would_ be there to witness Sakura tending to Kakashi's wounds with murder in her eyes. You were there, minding your own business, waiting for Chouji to be released from care, when Sakura had stormed past you dragging a lackadaisical Copy Nin behind her. Tsunade had beaten him to a pulp—proving why _she_ was Hokage rather than anyone else in the village and had gone on her merry way. Sakura had been unceremoniously shoved out of the fight until the two had had done with it, and she had certainly _not_ looked pleased. Ino had suggested early into the three-way fight that the two of you abandon your current position, she had work anyway and you had reports to write up. As much fun as watching this feud work itself out was, you had work to do.

"Yo!" the bloodied man had tossed your way before having his feet knocked from under him by his new girlfriend (you had stayed only long enough to witness the peacemaking between Kakashi and Tsunade where they had decided that Kakashi and Sakura were dating, no ifs ands or buts). You knew this was going to happen to the silver haired man, Sakura would have wanted to be the one who decided that, rather than getting foisted somewhere by her mentor. Her bright colored hair whipped around the corner, one of her hands firmly latched onto Kakashi's forearm. You still don't know if you should have felt sorry for the man. Kakashi's feet disappeared around the corner, limp and disinterested as he was pulled along the floor, and a nurse approached you about Chouji's condition. You are very glad you got over your crush on the pink haired psychopath early in life and that you never advertised those troublesome emotions, because that lax slide along the floor might have been yourself at some point. But you were on thin ice.

Thinking too much about Sakura was dangerous because talking to Ino, as Ino's boyfriend, about Sakura too much was dangerous, so you stopped so as not to get an earful later.

You decided to also _visit_ your girlfriend, it would be a drag if she'd found out you were there and hadn't gone to see her. You failed, though, to tell her about the horrors likely being inflicted on Kakashi, but you also felt it wasn't any of her bothersome business.

Women were a pain in that if you told them, they wanted to know more than you knew, and if you didn't tell them you were in trouble whether you'd known or not. You can only hope for the Copy Nin's sake that he learns this well and he learns it early. Judging from the yelling coming from somewhere around the corner, you don't think he will.

All of this intrigue was so boring…

* * *

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Your younger brother Masato is a quiet boy. He prefers gray masks, almost in response to your flamboyant ones. You think that gray makes him look like a ghost and tell him so often. You're the older brother, after all, and as the eldest of seven siblings you have the authority to do so. Except when your mother catches you doing it, she saves up your wrongdoing to tell to Lee-sensei. Lee-sensei is the cold heart of the large team you're part of—since Lee-sensei cannot perform genjutsu or ninjustu he was paired with Naruto-sensei as a tag-team effort. Naruto-sensei sort of sucks at taijutsu, which unfortunately for you is Lee-sensei's specialty. Your mother likes to tell Lee-sensei your disobediences.

Father always packs up half his book collection and takes you running when you misbehave. And by "takes you running," everyone always understands "sits in a tree and reads while _you_ run." He typically will make you run until he's done with at least two books—but there have been times when he's been angry enough to go get more from home while you continue doing laps.

It's his way of disciplining his children, when he feels they need to be. Which he rarely does save for grievous situations such as fighting— _fighting_ —with your siblings or showing poor sportsmanship. He isn't lazy, he just picks his battles. Your brother Masato often tells you he hopes that he get's Shikamaru-san for his jounin instructor—the man is lazy enough that Masato would be able to stay quiet and blend in. He's like a ghost, an uncanny, silent, _ghost_ and it kind of creeps you out sometimes. Not nearly as much as Riichirou, who is only six and can beat you at shogi, but close enough.

Masato has to work harder than you do at most things—Father found out you had perfect chakra control at the tender age of five, shortly after his injury. Being offline for nearly a year had allowed for Kakashi to focus all of his attention on you, his eldest son. Masato had been four and struggled with chakra maintenance, something which most normal four year olds struggled with, and sometimes you envy him. At nine you graduated from the Academy, and now at ten are being rigorously trained for the upcoming Chunin exams in Suna—and Masato at nine has yet to graduate from the Academy.

Mother says that's fine with her, saying that she herself didn't graduate from the Academy until she was twelve. You don't know when Father graduated from the Academy, or at what age he took his Chunin exam, but he gets strangely quiet when Mother tells about her childhood. You get a strange feeling, those times, that your young life has resembled his much more than hers.

* * *

It's not until the day, during your first Chunin exam, that your ankle is shattered by an exploding tag hidden by another exploding tag hidden by a diversion hidden by a mind-fuck genjutsu (seriously, Dad said he is the last Sharingan user, you really don't think it's fair that there are people like Sarutobi Masahiro, Yuhi Kurenai's son, wandering around with abilities that similar), that you have to take things as slowly as Masato always has been forced to. You feel caged in by an outside force you have always ignored, and Masato's _normalness_ as a ninja, one who will never likely rise to the rank of Jounin, grates you horribly. In the end you decide to ignore the feeling of being pressured—after all it certainly isn't your family, they wouldn't push you to become shinobi if you didn't want to be on. You also look past—but don't fix—the jealousy in your heart of your younger brother's lack of prodigious ability.

The four months it takes your mother to heal your ankle to partial usability are agonizing—but your dead on aim with senbon, kunai, shuriken, and various other instruments of death increases exponentially.

Once you regained partial mobility, Lee-sensei dragged your forcibly from the house with guilt. Lee-sensei wouldn't hurt a fly (you still think he is harboring some sort of freakish romantic admiration for your mother, which, other than the fact that it is coming from Lee-sensei, is just freakish. Lee-sensei's undivided attention to anything is freakish), but he knows the buttons to push which Naruto-sensei doesn't. He knows what will make you stand up and fight him for another bout, he is training you to emulate his discipline. His exploits at his first Chunin exam are legend, your mother often reminds you.

You are twelve when you pass the Chunin exams—you failed the first time, miscalculating an enemy ambush while "defending" a client, and nearly killed a teammate because of it. Masato at eleven still falls behind you in training but this does not mean, as your mother reinforces with fists, that he will not surpass you. Your father begins to discipline you strongly if he catches you referencing your rank against your siblings, but most importantly your brother. He still wears gray masks.

* * *

The day after Masato graduates from the Academy you are in the living room playing a simple card game with Minoru. Minoru is five, eight years your junior, and is a brilliant boy. It's probably good for him that he was born a boy, because your mother would have spoiled a girl rotten. You already have to put up with her babying Takara and Hoshimi, you _know_ Mom would have been awful if Minoru had been a girl. You're glad your mom put her foot down at seven children, _very_ glad.

Your father bursts into the room with a sullen Masato trailing him. Masato doesn't look up at you, but your father has the slightest of pauses when he notices you. This isn't good—your stupid, _normal_ brother has gone and done something out of the ordinary. In an instant your father has grabbed your arm away from you and is dragging you bodily along with him. Your cards fall in a waterfall to the floor and Minoru giggles happily at your misfortune. Father only waits the barest of moments for you and Masato to get your shoes on as you leave the house before grabbing you both by the elbows and leading you away. With your free arm you struggle to pull up your mask—a brilliant jade green one your mother loves—while Masato struggles to pull up his gray one. What did Masato do that you have to suffer to? This obviously isn't a family "run" otherwise at least Takara would have had to suffer too, being a girl and the third eldest. Your jealousy of her easy going manner with her younger twin brother (born an hour after her) pales in comparison to the jealousy you feel towards Masato's boring, gray, non-genius abilities.

And whenever your father gets that tense set to his shoulders, that particular one where one is a little more bunched up than the other and his posture gets even more slouched than usual, you know that a "run" is in your immediate future. He is weirdly able to remain personable (in his way) to people when he's dragging his offspring through town, which is hardly fair because then everyone sees your shame of being punished alongside your screw-up brother.

You belatedly realize that your father doesn't have his books with him. He is going to be running with the two of you, which means surprise attacks, genjutsu, and outright attacks from a former ANBU operative, not your easygoing father. You catch Masato's eye behind your father's shoulder and know he knows this as well.

You reach the usual training ground and he lets go of the two of you so quickly you stumble to regain your balance. Your father's eye is serious, hot with some unnamed emotion which has gotten him so worked up.

"Akihito," you stand a bit more firmly in response to your name, "Masato," your brother does as well, "I will no longer tolerate the two of you acting like you do." What?

"There is a coldness between you which I won't tolerate in my family. There is no fun or easiness between you, nor is there a rivalry which perseveres through anything. You cannot, without one of those three, go on missions of any rank higher than 'D' together with that kind of attitude towards one another. It will get people killed, it might get you both killed. Akihito," you force yourself to make eye contact with your father, which is scary when he's angry, "you told me after you failed your exam the first time that it was going to become your way to never let your mistake kill a comrade. To be this cool towards your brother is a mistake, and when that mistake comes to collect it's payment, you might have to pay with your brother's life."

"And Masato…you complained this morning of not having the hope to ever catch up to your brother. Yet you have never once asked his help. Not asking for assistance can get people killed on a mission too, either yourself when you become overwhelmed or others when they come to rescue you from your mess. You're going to be put on a team soon, but I will not send you to your sensei with this debilitating weakness. Now," the scary!Father face disappears, "start running. The both of you. You'll know when you screw up and when you get something right." And then he is gone in a flash far too fast for either of you to follow, leaving four exploding tags surrounding the two of you. So he was going to be laying ambushes up ahead in the time it took the two of you to dodge or disarm this first trap.

Great.


	3. Genially Psychotic, Prohibited from ANBU / Everyone Sucks at Something

It is cold for September, but not the coldest September you've ever lived through. The September before Naruto Uzumaki entered the Academy and went under your tutelage and extra-curricular hobby (you couldn't deny the little outcast anything, it seemed. You and the ANBU with the wolf mask) was supremely cold. You like to think it wasn't a foreboding cold, because you aren't a field agent—you aren't inherently suspicious. Your next door neighbor routinely attacks his front door before going in his apartment, and after that you often hear him yelling and "Haaaayaa!-ing" all over in there. His file at the mission headquarters lists him as Very Stable, Qualified for Missions Abroad. Your file lists you as Well Balanced, Qualified for Teaching and Clerical/Bureaucratic Positions. You interpret that as better than the one you had a few years ago. Well Balanced, Qualified for Janitorial Work. It had been a long hard, few years—if you never had to see an actual training ground again you'd die a happy, old man in your warm bed.

You read a lot of mission status reports before you assign mission scrolls. For instance, Nara Shikamaru's reads Lazy, Qualified for Intelligence and Strategy Missions. Hatake Kakashi's file reads Doesn't Kill Teammates Out of Hand, Qualified for All Missions, ANBU Preferred. All shinobi with "ANBU Preferred," in their status must have a "Propensity for Teammate Assasination" as their first qualifier. You're just happy that it doesn't read "Doesn't Kill Teammates Out of Hand Very Regularly." Naruto's…you've never read his. You haven't gotten up the guts to _write_ it, let alone research what that would tell about the boy. If anyone ever needs to know well…you'll just send them on a C-rank with him. That should fill it in. Just because you're a paper-pusher doesn't mean you want to push all papers all the time.

But no amount of memorizing shinobi qualifications was going to keep you warm or safe this cold September night. It was comforting, but that was the extent. Hatake Sakura's mission status file reads Mainly Stable, Qualified for All Jounin Medic Positions. If your neighbor is Very Stable, you shudder to think what the lesser qualification of Mainly Stable means in reality. Hatake Kakashi deserved a medal for bravery out of the line of duty. Hell, you'd even recommend him!

That was, of course, if he lived through the night. And, also, if _you_ lived through the night as the babysitter to his four children (Akihito is just on the cusp of being five, only days away, and is yearning to no longer share an age with his brother Masato. The twins, Takara and Takeo, are mere infants born only months ago). Frankly, with how cherubic his children's faces were when their mother's back wasn't to them and how badly Kakashi had looked when he'd dragged his own ass home…you think Kakashi has the better odds in this scenario than you. The better odds by _far_.

* * *

You can hardly recall anyone who has been this badly mashed up returning alive to Konoha under their own power. Your semi-son in law struggles for consciousness even now, too badly injured for you to risk sedating him—slowing his already sluggish pulse could prove fatal to the Copy Nin. You tersely order Shizune to bar Sakura from the room for at least an hour. This is it, this is the last straw—Kakashi is going to be stripped of his ANBU rank, prohibited forever from returning to the black ops. You will not let him go out and die on a mission he can't tell his wife about—if he wants to go out on a regular A-rank and get his ass murdered that was his prerogative which he'd have to face Sakura about. You are putting your foot down on even one more S-rank mission other than the one he said "I do," to six years ago. That one, currently hammering on the door with chakra infused fists, still might kill him.

You begin to gingerly peel away the armor and blood soaked cloth around the worst of his injuries. Half the reason ANBU uniforms are skin tight is to keep all the bone fragments in one place for a top medic such as yourself to find and put back into place. For Kakashi's left shoulder blade and right foot you're glad for this foresight.

"Got caught…snapping…" his eye is wandering your face, trying to figure out through his concussion why his medic is blond and not pink haired, "snapping…thingy," he gestures with a flick of an index finger his frustration with what exactly he'd encountered. He is so out of it he doesn't know he's talking to you, the Hokage, who are allowed to know the details of his mission. Such a good ninja almost gone to waste!

"Ah, the thingy."

"Yes, the thingy. It snapped and when I grabbed the other…thing it slammed down on my foot. Tried to avoid getting clobbered too badly…would have been my hand if I were a…second slower." Great. The famously taciturn man chooses now, on the brink of death, to open up of all things about his mission injuries. Great. Why do Sakura and Shizune always get the interesting ones who tell a life story? Why do you always get the Listers? You seriously weigh the pros and cons of whacking Kakashi unconscious. But no…you have a suspicion about that head injury—probably something cracked clean apart in and about his cranium. If anything shifted too awfully much it would force bone fragments into that wonderful Hokage-promotion-worthy head of his.

That thought gives you the gumption to power through the difficult healing session ahead of you. If Kakashi lives though this you're going to foist your title on him so fast he won't know what hit him. He doesn't have any wayward teammates to offer as replacements, either.

* * *

Trapping the twins in their respective cradles had been easy, and making an Akihito-and-Masato-Proof chakra barrier over those cradles had been a piece of cake. Now, however, you belatedly realize that while the twins are safe from their brothers, _you_ are not safe from the brothers. Masato follows you around with sad, dark little Kakashi eyes peeking above a gray mask and the boy is beginning to creep you out. He's what Kakashi probably was when he was very very young, which only makes it creepier because this little boy might be about to lose his father as well. Akihito is a different story. Akihito has declared you to be the Enemy Nin as he plays Shinobi vs Nukenin with you. The child failed to inform you of this at first, however, but you found out soon enough when he began throwing shuriken at you with disturbing accuracy.

You now know why no one seems to be a repeat babysitter for the entirety of the little clan Sakura and Kakashi are raising—the two of them are raising ninja, not children. You learn from a quiet Masato that he is only trailing you to find your weaknesses and use them against you—and that did you know that Akihito knows how to use exploding tags? You would take the two of them outside into the night, to be away from the house which Sakura threatened you was not to be touched nor a single dish out of place, but it is so cold out there that you doubt you'd escape being castrated by the woman if she ever found out.

So you, after three hours of Masato's staring and Akihito's attacks, _reluctantly_ captured both of them and hung them from the ceiling fan and turned it on. It had always worked on you as a child—making you dizzy enough to not want to contemplate walking let alone trying to aim or stare for at least a few hours. Just to be safe, however, you leap to the ceiling and pin yourself there with chakra when you let them down after a half hour. They might recover quickly and you don't want them to be able to launch a ground assault against you when they do.

Hopefully Kakashi hasn't taught them how to climb with chakra yet.

* * *

You keep pushing back the time when Sakura can come in, wanting her to see the least injured looking Kakashi as you can get him to be. You want the man to take your spot on the mountain, as it were, and for him to do that he has to live through the berating he is going to get from his wife.

His shoulder blade will have to rest for at least six months—and this meant no missions for six months. You might as well schedule Sakura's first maternity appointment now. You have been around the block a few times, and you can also do comparative math when looking at medical records between Mr. and Mrs. Hatake. When Kakashi has to be home for more than a month because of an injury, a few months short of a year later another little Hatake is brought into the world. It is just the way of things. Goodness, they must be running out of babysitters! And they had so kindly declined your offer to babysit…pity another little one would be on the way in less than a year.

Of course, it would also bring Sakura crawling back to you sooner—you'd always wanted grandbabies.

* * *

It turns out, you ruefully realize about an hour later, that Kakashi has _indeed_ taught his progeny how to climb with chakra. Fuck. A. Duck. And Sakura shows no signs of returning anytime before the predawn light wakes the twins.

"Um, Iruka-san, why are you crying?"

* * *

 

* * *

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You're eleven, and you really suck at being a ninja. Onii-san says you're just comparing yourself to people who are far and above your own league—don't worry, you'll turn out fine. Like he's allowed to say that or something. Akihito is as much, or more, a genius as your father Kakashi. Masato isn't a genius, but he put forth the hard work to become nearly as good as Akihito. Takara is following your mother's footsteps into medicine—at eighteen she is running her own ward under Shizune-san's direction. Takeo takes his name seriously—which always earns him worried looks from your father who claims to be too lazy to pressure any of his children—and although he hasn't been admitted to ANBU no one feels the promotion is very far off. And then there's the fact that your earliest memories of your father are sitting on his knee while your mother threatened him into doing his paperwork as Rokudaime Hokage. You learned to walk in that office.

You have to compare yourself to these people, your family, because you supposedly share DNA with them. If they are so awesome, why can't _you_ , Minoru, be awesome? Your doubt haunts your nights and makes your shuriken wobble. You graduate by the skin of your teeth to the rank of Genin, and only again by the skin of your teeth do you make it to that rank in actuality. Your teacher is a taciturn stoic by the name of Hyuuga Neji, a man only softened in some strange way by your self-doubt. His cold violet eyes evaluate you approvingly every time you show up for training or for a mission departure. You often wondered at first if Neji-sensei only saw the Copy Nin, Sharingan no Kakashi, when he looked at you.

You _look_ like your father. Your eyes are the same coal as his right one is, and your hair is a colorless silver which refuses to learn the ins and outs of a hairbrush. You can see yourself at thirteen (another reason to worry that you are substandard, passing the Academy test at this age has been unheard of in your family) developing his broad shoulders, and your nose is peppered with freckles like his. The only remarkable thing about your freckles is that all of your other siblings inherited your mother's creamy skin, and you are the only one to actually get your father's freckles.

The first day, after passing his hellish test, Neji-sensei gave a single assenting nod before informing your team that you were truly Genin (his test was a grueling thing. He simply attacked you and your teammates without mercy, not asking you to get up after you fell or telling you to stay down. His silence spurred the three of you on, to attack until there was nothing left in you. Neji-sensei is certifiably insane). You don't know what any of that means until tenseness bleeds out of your father's shoulders at the sight of your determined face when you get home. Neji-sensei had apparently only trained one team in his entire time as a Jounin, Team Nineteen. Nineteen was composed of younger friends of Naruto-sama, Konohamaru and his lackeys Moegi and Udon. Nineteen had only passed because each of the three new Genin had taken a lot of Naruto-sama's life-lessons to heart—and they had passed out of Neji-sensei's jurisdiction almost fifteen years ago. _Before you were born._ Your father had a right to be worried, and apparently you should have worried more too. Your team was the first to pass Neji-sensei's endurance test in more than a decade.

You spend four years under his tutelage, in total. Your team broke apart after two years, but he kept you on after that. Some of the last words he said to you as your teacher were, "You really suck at being a ninja, Minoru-kun," you had felt your heart break in two, your sensei was confirming your worst fear, answering an affirmative to your deepest doubts, "but," you're very glad you're not overly emotional like your mother and sisters, "even the Nanadaime sucks at being a ninja. I suck at being a ninja," an evil gleam took Neji's eye and you wished you hadn't made yourself into sterner stuff. The ability to quail at that gaze would have been nice, "Even your mother and father sucked at being ninja." When Naruto-sama dropped by later that evening you couldn't keep it in anymore—Neji-sensei had insulted and discredited just about everything he'd ever taught you about anything. So you blurted it out at dinner.

Naruto-sama had laughed until he was literally blue in the face (you had concluded that how could a 360 degree view of everything lead to a sub-par ninja?) and told you about when he had defeated Neji-sensei during the Chuunin exam. Apparently that 360 degree defensible view didn't include beneath Neji-sensei's feet.

* * *

You're twenty when your brother Masato marries the Nanadaime's eldest daughter, Hitomi. Masato is twenty seven and she is twenty six. They are both jounin who you look up to immensely. Masato isn't the first of your family to get married, however. That achievement, for it is an achievement in your family, belongs to you. When you graduated to the rank of Chuunin at fifteen you had noticed (for the first time in your life, really) a girl named Etsu. Etsu was seventeen and beautiful, with cornflower eyes and bright blond hair. She had always been filed under the category of "cousin" to you because she had been a close playmate to your sisters. And her mother was your mother's best friend. After the two of you had reached a sound draw (the beginnings of a family curse it would seem, both of your mothers having a similar experience) at the very last match of the exams, you had removed that "cousin" epithet faster than Takara and Takeo could start bickering. Yamanaka Etsu was beautiful.

Your only trouble asking her out was her father. Etsu's father was Nara Shikamaru, and he was a very scary man. He was your brother Riichirou's sensei, and he knew the end of most conversations before they started. According to your brother, Shikamaru didn't like to be bothered or hassled very much. "Very much" to Shikamaru apparently meant "having to look up from the game board," or "having to investigate boys interested in his daughter." Etsu insisted that you talk with her father and tell him about your relationship, and the way she pouted and said in that voice of hers that she didn't "Want poor papa to worry about me when I go out at night." You had felt at the time that seventeen was too young to die at the hands of Konoha's master strategist, but resigned yourself. If this was the way to get Etsu to go out with you, so be it. Mom had dressed up as your father for Halloween to get him to notice her, and to go around dressed up and acting like Dad had to be almost as bad as this.

Shikamaru-san had originally made to shut the door in your face, mumbling about how having a pretty daughter was troublesome and how boys needed to quit stalking his family, etc, etc. A hand you recognized as Ino's latched onto his wrist however and dragged the door back open. After that things seemed to go…strangely smoothly. Ino wasn't even in the room, she had bustled off to the kitchen. Shikamaru mumbled some more about how troublesome and hard to understand women were, and then some about "if she doesn't want to take my name when we get married why do I have to do this," etc, etc. Although you hadn't known it, you had gotten the OK from Etsu's father by even showing up that night. Most boys never did, which was why Etsu seemed to be perpetually single.

She thankfully didn't make you ask for any blessings from her parents when you asked her to marry you two years later. Your own parents were happy for you—your mother sighing about how wonderful it was to find love at that age, and your father cautiously asking you if you didn't want to wait a few more years. Neither of them bothered you much about it, although your older siblings reacted in a variety of odd ways. Akihito seemed to become all the more engrossed in his Icha Icha, while Masato seemed stricken by the fact that if he married Hitomi his father-in-law would be the Hokage. Your sisters became strange flirts with their boyfriends (although Takara went through far more boyfriends than your father approved of). Takeo and Riichirou could only clap you on the back oddly—Takeo didn't have time for girlfriends and Riichirou was gay. But things worked themselves out eventually.

Like the fact that your mother wanted grandchildren—a wish which was apparently entirely new to your father. You begin to hang out with Shikamaru a lot more as Etsu and Hitomi giggle about how close their due-dates are, and won't their babies be just the most adorable ones anyone has ever seen? Hinata, Sakura, and Ino get nearly as bad talking about how adorable and cute their future grandbabies will be. The chatter bothers you, and only your father-in-law seems to understand the half of it. Your own father understands the other half, because he too lives with one of the perpetrators.


	4. This was all Gai's Fault / It's Totally Not a Curse

This was all Gai's fault. He invited you to his annual Halloween party, even enticing you with the offer of not having to dress up. Totally his fault. For one thing, you hadn't remembered he usually invited half the town. You are lucky everyone is more than slightly tipsy when you arrive over an hour late. Ninja, excepting yourself, typically arrive a half hour early prior to a deadline. The "earliest" you typically get places is half an hour after things were supposed to start. But you would have gotten to the party sooner this time, you totally would have.

Except for the fact that it took awhile to work up the cool to leave the house. Gai speaks from experience when he whines about how you speak to him—he is one of the few people who know of your crippling social anxiety. Groups and Hatake Kakashi don't get on well, and the best way you've found of overcoming things is to ignore someone's presence for as long as you can stretch out. If you don't think about them, you can't get wound up about talking to them. You wear your mask because you're your father's son, but the mask makes things so much easier in your day to day life.

Strangely this doesn't interfere with your worklife.

Waking up, going to work, and throwing knives at people? Fine with you. It's almost _more_ than fine with you, because they are the enemy. One of you will leave the other behind as a corpse, so there's no room for your freak-outs. Going to a party with close (as you'll let them be close) friends who will be watching your every move? Much harder to deal with psychologically, which is why you try to arrive late so you can blend into the shadows; unnoticed by the intoxicated partygoers. People who are intoxicated can't be taken as seriously, and you are much more at ease around drunkards in social situations.

You've just settled into a handy corner in the living room (having only been accosted four times between here and the door), and you have straight water in your hand. Gai had tried to give you punch, but that smelled spiked, so you'd tracked down Kurenai and gotten what she was drinking. On your trek, Naruto had tried to ply you with some of his clear beverage, but with how dilated his eyes were it was just as clear what he was drinking. The fourth person you'd encountered was Shizune who questioned you as to the whereabouts of the Hokage. After her, you and your water cup (ceremoniously dubbed Obito) had found this lovely corner behind the couch.

Your friends joke that you're a wallflower at things like parties, but they know you like to watch them laugh more than make them laugh. Being the life of the party is not something you picked up from any of the people you've lost. Luckily you've always had a friendly acquaintance like Gai who is willing to upstage you regularly. You have good friends, but the sly grin which splits Gai's face when he next answers the door has you worried. It _is_ the night of trick-or-treat, but you _had_ hoped Konoha's Man in Green wouldn't bring that to play against you.

On second thought maybe you wish he _had_ —anything he had had to be better than _this_.

The young woman coming in is very obviously Sakura, one of your students from long ago. She is another one of those good friends to you, and sometimes you daydream of that friendship coming to something more. But those are only the idle daydreams of a hospital bed, however, when you're reminded of your own mortality. She doesn't normally occupy your thoughts other than that.

But from now on she will—must—be looked at in an entirely new way.

She's dressed up as _you_.

Her hair is still pinkish underneath the silver—it sparkles a bit, unfortunately, but it's heartwarming that she knows you've always had this color of hair—and is help up and away from her head at your own typically thirty degree angle. Her head is tilted at an equal angle, making the entire hair routine seem that much more believable. If you weren't already frozen in your seat at her appearance, the devil is in the details. Such as how she slouches over to the side from her hips rather than her back, one hand shoved deep in standard issue uniform pants. In her other hand she holds a dog-eared orange book, a lone green eye fixed on the page before her. She even has her hitai-ate slung over her left eye, above her _mask_.

"Sakura-chan, what a wonderful costume! If not for him already being here, and your verdant eye I might have mistaken you for my eternal rival!" Gai's bright, sly smile grows wider but soon freezes. Sakura hasn't looked up from the book at him, hasn't even greeted him. Gai's smile flickers.

"Excuse me, what?" Apparently while Gai had been privy to the plan, he hadn't expected such a perfect impersonation. Sakura makes her way past Gai, nose still in her book—where had she _gotten_ that? If you didn't know better…wait…that is _your_ copy of—!

You shrink back into your corner the closer she comes to you, because with her path through the milling people, and her costume, only you can be her destination. You aren't prepared for this, and all you can do is fight an oncoming panic attack as she moves slowly through the crowd in your direction.

The drunks are of no help to you now, you realize, because they can't tell she's hunting you. You, however, are perfectly sober thanks to Obito. She's moving how any kunoichi moves through a party when they're on an assassination mission. You don't remember seeing her assigned to such a mission, but it might be some sort of S-rank…

No. Stop it.

Tsunade wouldn't send a medic-nin to kill you at a public party. Your paranoia, which gets worse as more people are around you, freezes your muscles and makes your heartbeat feel painful in your chest. If only one of these people bore you an ounce of ill-will…Parties just have too much unfocused good will. Parties are where people in your profession show up on missions to kill the attendees. And you're out of time.

"Ah, Kaka-sensei!"

"And who are you talking to, Hatake-san?" Her eye crinkles up happily—she's been practicing, has she? Well then.

"Well, you know." A noncommittal shrug of one shoulder. If you'd been civilians it would have been creepy—it took a lot of effort to observe and learn to mimic someone's innate mannerisms this well.

"Ah." She doesn't give you her own typical happy nod, but inhales the tiniest bit before plopping herself down next to you. You once spent three months of a four month mission just learning how to make your henge perfect—the subject you were changing to was well known for even the slightest of tics being iconic. Sakura knows how you'll even react, not verbally but physically. Noncommittal shrugs exist for you to get rid of nervous energy in on-the-spot social situations.

Although right now you could run the circuit of the walls without breaking a sweat, there's so much adrenalin shooting through you. You really wish she hadn't vaulted the couch just now to wiggle in next to you. Now you can't nod off for a little bit because then you'd be snuggling your former subordinate who happens to be dressed up as you. And you have to get your book back from the little witch.

You spend the next hour or so basically talking to yourself. It's heartwarming that she's stalked you to this extent, it means you mean something to her. Ninja stalk one another to show affection, it's why she stalked Sasuke years ago, and why Rock Lee stalks her even now (you'll need to tell him that ferns don't quiver in brokenhearted anger).

"Kaka-sensei," which is you, as she is Hatake-san, "when are you going to look underneath the underneath?"

"Of what?" This is a new direction to the conversation, and perhaps you'll find out why she's in your odd get-up tonight.

"Of how you treat your old students nowadays. You will sit and listen to the blond one burble for hours to you, and you are patient with him where your other old student will beat the living daylights out of him. And the other one, Sayuri or something, word is you won't go to the hospital after a mission unless she's there. What's up with all that?"

So she's caught on, and maybe you do let your daydreams guide you a little more than they should. You'll be honest with her, because this evening can't get more traumatic for you despite your good company.

"Well, I respect Naruto, that's why I'm patient with him. But under that I really believe in him. As for _Sakura_ , I, well, I respect her. She knows how to grow, which is something compared to Naruto and the one that defected. Neither of them could truly open their eyes and learn to grow, they just acted on external pressures and went. Sakura could have stayed on with me, but she would have learned nothing. I didn't know where to start with her, not that I had much more with the boys, and she'd likely have retired by now." You slow your words, trying to end this without going into real motives.

"It's amazing how you fail to answer questions." Her face, you know, is sour behind her mask. She's just playing with you at this point.

"I apologize, Hatake-san, for not meeting expectations. I care a great deal, a great deal more than I should, for Sakura and I'd like to not advertize that to the drunken masses," you gesture to the party guests and their behavior. You glance at the people you'd spoken to this evening—Gai is doing pushups, Naruto is enumerating his plan for becoming Hokage to the fern that Lee has himself disguised as, Lee is still disguised as a fern, and Shizune is dragging a whining Tsunade out the door.

In your moment of inattention, Sakura swoops in and kisses your masked cheek with her masked lips.

"Then go get her." And then she's gone.

* * *

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It must be a family tradition, falling in love with someone over a decade your senior. You did with Keisuke, he was twenty seven and you were sixteen. And then there was your father before you who got married to your mother when he was twenty two and she thirty one. Your Sakura is only following in the footsteps of many great men and women.

* * *

The apartment is in chaos when you arrive. One Copy Nin is conspicuously absent, the only potential calm in this storm. Perfect.

Sakura is surrounded by a legion of her friends, worrying her lip the way she would when studying the medical texts Tsunade assigned to her in years past. Your daughter's hair is what's being studied now. More like argued over. Two girls you know were in Sakura's class during school (it was school! Not all of this pretentious "Academy" crap. Seriously, Keisuke and Sakura are full of it) are fussing over whether it should be trimmed or given a massive chop. The blond seems to be arguing for a chop and the quieter raven-haired one was moderating between that and what another girl argued for, which was unequivocally long hair. Sakura sat in the maelstrom, gazing between her friends' reflections in the mirror in front of her. You step forward, shooing the girls away with your steady assuredness.

You lay your hands on either side of your daughter's head to make her listen to you. Her beautiful green eyes gaze up at your reflection in the mirror. They are the only thing she inherited from you, her hair color and face shape both given to her by her father. You see, but do not focus on, her friends in the room behind you. They'll take over after you get done with helping her decide. The blond gossip mill behind you (who can only be Inoichi's daughter. It's good he bounced back so quickly after "losing" you to Keisuke. They had a freakish rivalry over which of them you'd fall in love with. It was less than flattering) watches anxiously.

"Tell me, Sakura-chan, has my would be son-in-law said anything to you about your hair?" Understanding floods into your daughter's eyes. Wonderful things can be done by her friends to her hair, short or long, and Sakura would no doubt love how either length turned out. But would it properly take away her fiancée's breath?

Sakura's smile lights up the room, the very slightest tan on her upper face glowing. You smile back at your odd child, your work completed with her at least. Her friends close in around her as she declares "Long hair! Up-do!" and you step back to let them work. But you aren't done here.

There's still the mission Keisuke sent you on for your visit here. He wants an inspection of the home your daughter is making here. Just because he was eleven years _your_ senior when you met doesn't mean he trusts this reclusive Hatake Kakashi. Keisuke's hair would turn a _normal_ color before he let his daughter go off and marry anybody, let alone the one ninja who just about no one knew anything about in the entire village. Your husband has been quietly stewing for months, ever since he found out that his daughter, his only child, was getting married to her ne'er-do-well boyfriend. Or at least that's what he tells you when you ask why he's been wound up so tightly lately. Why you married a shinobi is beyond you some days.

If this will alleviate some of your husband's worry, you'll rummage as best you can through your daughter's life.

You've been to this apartment before, to have dinner with Sakura and Kakashi. It was here that over one dinner in March that the two of them informed you and Keisuke that they were getting married. You stand for a moment over their dining room set up. Kakashi and Keisuke had been sitting across from one another, and you and Sakura had been facing each other. There had been a comfortable lull (only for you in all likelihood, Keisuke was probably wound up pretty tightly, and it wasn't every day that you told someone's parents you were marrying their daughter) when Sakura had reached over to put her hand over her masked boyfriend's. Kakashi hadn't twitched—which was something Keisuke had obsessed over for a week after the event—but had cleared his throat and taken his mask down. He is certainly a handsome man, now that you think about it.

"Haruno-san, I've asked Sakura to marry me. She's said she will, and I would like your blessings. I'm also going to marry her even if you don't approve." Well, when you put it that way sonny…You're very glad that Keisuke held onto his temper for just a moment right then—it was another thing which Sakura had inherited from her father. They both have famously short fuses.

But that was how dinners went. Either man declaring something the other one could only hold his reaction to—with that sort of atmosphere, according to Keisuke, one can't really analyze your surroundings. Ninja were always saying things like "surroundings," and "atmosphere," and analyze," and "inspect," and "surreptitious," and "conduct."

That's what Keisuke said to you this morning. "Honey, can you, when you go over to…Sakura's…can you conduct a surreptitious inspection of the place? It's a little late, I know, but I want to know. Just if you see anything worrisome, can you remember some details about it for me?" It apparently had seemed rude to do any sort of real cataloguing when here for dinner with Sakura and Kakashi in the past. Kakashi never _didn't_ notice something, and a close inspection of his apartment under his nose would have been humiliating to him. _Yes, we neither of us believe you capable of properly caring for our daughter. What sort of money do you make that you could afford this place by yourself before she moved in, anyway?_ Well, you were safe from that conversation for now. Sakura's friends would expel him from the place today, and that was what had probably motivated your husband to recruit you to his profession for a time.

The place is sparse, although there is a full bookshelf in the living room. It is full of strategy books, medical journals, and your future son-in-law's questionable reading material. One shelf is dedicated to photographs, however. They are in frames ranging from simple to ornate, proving two different decorating ideologies are living under the same roof.

You look past the ones of the various teams each of them has been on. You sight for ones which will aid your reconnaissance mission. The naked face of Kakashi stares out at you from one of them, arresting your attention. There is a smile on his funnily tanned face as he and Sakura sit on the couch in this very apartment. You can see it out of the corner of your eye. Sakura is asleep on his lap, making you wonder how exactly the Copy Nin got such a picture. Some sort of clone of himself? Hmm, that is much more something for your husband to figure out, he's the ninja after all. The picture is in a simple black frame.

A picture next to it is some sort of forced double portrait—Kakashi is covered in miso soup, mask and all. He doesn't look happy, but your daughter looks overjoyed next to him. Her own green mask is pooled around her neck. From the angle you can figure out that she is corralling Kakashi with one arm (getting miso all over her dress by doing so) and holding the camera with the other. The frame is white with silver and blue accents.

Somewhat behind the double portrait is photographic evidence of an event Sakura herself has told you of. She only mentioned it once, a fight the two of them had had years ago just before Sakura's eighteenth birthday. Kakashi had been trying to do the honorable thing and not date a former subordinate more than a dozen years his junior. Said subordinate had been having none of it. You remember her tears over the man—"He admits he cares for me deeply, but if he does, why doesn't he see he's only hurting me by staying away? I thought I made myself clear a month ago!"—and you remember her quiet tale of this fight. It took place roughly two days after she'd bawled herself out on your shoulder.

She'd said the fight was routine.

But the photograph calls her out for lying to her own mother! She'd massively understated what had gone on. Your daughter looks ready to kill Kakashi who himself is winding back an impressive ball of whatever it is they call it. Sakura played this fight off as nothing out of the ordinary, just something to pound each of their frustration out in. You've _seen_ routine training, and this is most certainly not it. You push back your shock to figure out which of them owns this photo. You recognize many of the fancy frames from when you and Sakura went shopping a good while ago. The black frames almost all contain old pictures of a younger Kakashi or other people who have passed away. But this picture is framed in something far more fancy that the regular black ones…but…it's far more simple than the ones Sakura's pictures are in. The picture behind the glass is an enigma.

"Mama?" You turn around, pasting a smile on your face for Sakura. You meet her eyes in the mirror without hesitation, not guilty in the least of snooping. "Mama, I'll tell you all about that picture when they're done with my hair. And Sai took that picture, which is why it's so well proportioned and all."

Of course your kunoichi daughter would notice you! Next time Keisuke needs to know something he can remember he's a ninja and do it himself!

"And don't send Papa to do his own dirty work, if he really wants to know he can ask me or Kakashi."

Well dammit all to hell.


	5. A May Wedding in September / The People He's Loved

After your mother's advice it was easy to choose your look for next week's wedding. Ino had pouted but had acquiesced easily enough, and helped out by suggesting what flowers to put in your hair. Beautiful reds and whites were to be woven into your hair, matching the flowers which were embroidered into your dress. Your mother had thrown such a fit that you were having a civil ceremony with a larger reception party afterwards—she wanted her little girl to have a flouncy civilian's wedding. You countered that by pointing out that you wouldn't even know what to be excited about at your own wedding if you did that. You didn't mention that Kakashi would probably freak out at a big ceremony.

Mother hadn't quite made peace with the fact that you weren't going to go down that road with her, and that made it all the more comical when she gaped like a fish at the pale pink kimono you are going to wear to the wedding. She's better now, helping even. Like agreeing to keep the snapshots of your hairdo at her house, a place which Kakashi avoids like the plague most days.

Kakashi was going to have his breath taken away next week, you just know it.

* * *

You're very allergic to spring flowers. If there were a soldier pill for allergies, you'd happily down a bottle. Because of your allergies, you'd begged Sakura for an autumn wedding, and with a "poor, famous, I'm-in-a-billion-bingo-books, Kakashi," she'd acquiesced. She'd even asked you, the night you were allowed back in your own home, if it was okay that she had flowers in her hair next week. You are a fool, and you suck as a ninja, because you said yes. It's fall, right? You've never had any trouble with anything which grows in September, that you can recall.

You forgot that your wife-to-be is best friends with a florist.

The first inkling you had was when you rested your chin on Sakura's head after both of you had signed the marriage certificate. Your nose felt far warmer than it should have, and your eye felt like it had too much water in it—earlier you'd written the symptoms off as being moved by finally having Sakura as your own. Now you regret it.

Your allergies don't make you sneeze, they just fill your head with cotton and make you ache and feel short of breath. On bad days your eyes itch. You resist the urge to scratch your eye out, but only because you know that no one is going to donate another one to you. Not that you'd want to see the world out of two eyes which don't belong to you.

You don't ask Sakura to take her flowers out of her hair, because she looks beautiful. You don't even distance yourself from her, in fact just the opposite. You even have a handy excuse of the flowers when you want to lean in and say something to her—you have to lean in on her left because on her right are her flowers. You wouldn't want to crush the beautiful arrangement.

And you wouldn't want anything to dim the joy in Sakura's eyes.

* * *

You don't find out that your husband was miserable during your wedding until Ino gasps weeks later when you mention how bad his allergies will be in the spring. She'd put loads of spring flowers into your hair and in the handful of flowers you'd held for most of that day. There had been far too much assuming going on last month, apparently. Ino had assumed—rightly so, she'd known nothing of Kakashi's bad allergies—that exotic, out of season flowers would be best. You had assumed that she'd use seasonal flowers. Poor Kakashi had assumed the same.

And he hadn't even mentioned anything to clue you in! He could have asked what kind of flower was this, or this, and then you would have realized they were spring flowers and thus horrible on his senses. It wouldn't have been something dramatic, you wouldn't have cried or anything, it just would have been quiet and stealthy. But it wasn't. He'd suffered for hours.

How many times did he lean in to talk in your ear quietly? How many times had he rested his chin on your head? You know for a fact that come March and April the _word_ pollen would bring on his symptoms. Unless one knew about them, however, he'd never let on that he was in misery. It makes you feel awful, that you were so caught up in everything else that you didn't notice the one person who mattered most that day. You abandon Ino, who understands, and spring out across Konoha in search of your masochistic husband. You find him at home, carefully studying what's probably an intelligence report.

"You silly fool," you say as you sit on the table in front of him, shoving his papers out of your way. You resist hitting him, because this is really your fault not his. His eye looks up at you steadily, lazy and happy. "You could have said something, and I'd've taken them right out. I could've gotten you something for your nose. You're a silly fool!" He smiles, a smile which you love seeing. You still feel ready to cry about it all, though.

"But you were so happy, and you were so beautiful— _are_ beautiful—I wouldn't have said something even if you beat me. I was tongue-tied, I was breathless." Dammit he's going to have you bawling if he goes on with that talk.

"Okay, but next time you need to speak up, idiot." He smiles that calming smile up at you, wrapping his arms around your torso. He buries his face in your stomach and sighs, a happy sigh that only someone content with the world can sigh. You both sit still for a long minute, silence ruling the apartment.

"You know I'm not going to, don't you? I don't mind suffering, as long as I can see you looking as pretty as you can be," he mumbles, dragging you a little closer to him, almost off the tabletop. You scoff.

"This. This is why you are a certifiable masochist, Kakashi."

"At least it's not why I can't have nice things. Because I'd hate for you to leave me over something like me refusing to take flowers out of your hair."

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You don't rationalize things. You don't talk things to death, and you don't recall beating any dead horses recently. When you tell Sakura that you're bisexual it doesn't bother you very much, it's not something which bothers shinobi much. Shinobi are about as bothered about it as they are about most relationships. Civilians are the idiots who get squeamish. Sakura's eyes are only a little startled, but her body language doesn't change as she rests against you. You'd been discussing previous partners and the like—you're a little worried about your innocent little Sakura, her life experience throwing seeds of doubt into your mind. You'll be safe from her wrath as long as they don't grow, as long as you keep trusting her and not deciding things for her about your relationship.

She settles further into your embrace after her initial reaction, tugging your arms around herself more securely, and you think that by some miracle your jealous little Sakura doesn't want to know about this part of your past. You'd be wrong, as you sometimes are with Sakura. She has a history of rising above expectations, such as when she leveled you last November. You barely catch the indication she's going to talk, which shows she's been thinking this through in her head—her words don't catch with embarrassment and they don't lack flow.

"Kakashi, your rivalry with Gai-sensei, is that just the twisted way you two show affection? And if it is, you need to tell him you're off limits, or _I_ will." She is halfway turned around to scowl at you.

You feel those seeds of doubt wither a bit—although she seems to lack a lot of experience compared to you, she certainly knows where and how to hit things. Of course her teacher in many things more than medical is Tsunade who is downright creepy with her intuition sometimes. Her student would no doubt pick up on quick, hard hitting questions.

"Eh…Gai…" You raise one of your shoulders in an awkward shrug. Gai. Your best friend, sometimes your only friend between deaths of others. He's been there since…ever. You'd only spent a smidgen of time at the Academy, and you'd made some deep impression on him. You'd thought, hell still do think, that your departure would be the end of a brief acquaintance, but apparently your rapid promotion to Chuunin had only made him work twice as hard in order to catch up with you. He'd graduated the Academy at age ten, four years after you'd left him behind. You hung out with him because—well no, you hadn't hung out with him. You didn't disappear when he sat next to you in the mess hall or at the library or the park or wherever. He was the only one besides Sensei who accorded himself that honor. Then again there was the fact that you weren't actually good enough to escape from Sensei if he really wanted to see you, and Gai would just keep looking until he collapsed. So to save them both the trouble you simply let them be if they found you.

Sakura waits patiently, having settled back down in your arms, waiting to hear your answer. Jealous little sneak…

Gai was the one who'd helped you out of the hospital after _that_ mission, declaring that if you failed to make a speedy recovery he would volunteer for twice as many missions to cover your slack. You didn't mention to him that he had to train for his Jounin exam and that was what he should be focusing on. But his strange way of caring had pricked something deep inside of you. The Sharingan wept bitterly behind the bandages the entire way home—Obito always showed what he felt where you didn't. You began to form your underneath the underneath ideology because of that day—Underneath those words Gai was telling you he was worried for you, but underneath that was Gai telling you that if you needed time…you didn't have to worry for the village's wellbeing while you were at it.

You sigh. After that it was kind of written.

"Gai has been there for me for almost as long as I can remember. When I had just turned fifteen I lost my Sensei during the Kyuubi attack. The Third charged me with watching over Naruto while he searched for the whereabouts of the Hokage, my teacher. I was in shock—but that's not why Sarutobi-sama had me watching the infant. Even if I recovered my wits, the fact that the boy was Sensei's son would protect him from my fear of the Kyuubi. But I was only barely able to function, and Gai found me that way. He knew nothing of Naruto being the new container, he knew nothing of any of it. As a Chuunin he'd been on duty carting people to the hospital. But when I didn't move to attack him or acknowledge him he knew something was wrong." Sakura is much stronger than you, which is why she's able to pry your fingers open from around her forearm and wrap her hand up in yours. This is why you hate giving air to your awful memories, you always manage to freak out somehow.

"I defended Naruto that night, but Gai defended me." Sakura doesn't relax in your hold, she remains alert—years of being a ninja telling her when her opponent is finished speaking or not.

You remember your fanatic care of Naruto—he was under the protection of the Third, but you didn't trust anyone with Sensei's son other than yourself. And Gai. Because Gai seemed almost too wrapped up in being obsessed with _you_ to notice when you carried the soon to be hated infant around. Gai broke the rules of being a shinobi—loyalty to the village above all, etc, etc—where you were concerned. He still does. Gai didn't question you, even when he too realized " _what_ " Naruto was. You defended the little tyke from random attacks by the villagers, and so he did too. Eventually most ninja in the village understood that the little blond orphan was to be left alone. And Gai grew closer to you as you lost more people—trying to keep them was like catching moonlight, something even the Sharingan couldn't do.

"He wasn't the first man I dated though. As painful as it is now to think about, I had a meaningless fling with an Uchiha. It wasn't…It wasn't meaningless to _me_ , but it was to him. He was too wrapped up in his cousin." Sakura clutches at your hand, wondering which Uchiha you're talking about.

"Shisui and I woke up in the same bed one morning after a particularly drunken evening the night before, and we kept up the pattern for a few weeks, just with less alcohol. And then he told me he couldn't, wouldn't, see me anymore. I was amazing in every way, but a poor replacement for his cousin Itachi. Three days later he was dead. That's when I went to Gai."

It was supposed to be just for the routine challenge, to work out frustrations in a way which was only healthy for shinobi. It had ended with allowing Gai—who had been developing superspeed through massive weight training, he didn't use it with you very often because it was pretty much useless if you opened up your Sharingan—to shove you to the ground and kiss you senseless. You had wanted more but that was all he gave you then. It turned out to be all you'll ever get.

"I used him, used him as a bounce-back from Shisui's death, from the fact that Shisui was only using _me_. He told me that he wasn't ready for such a thing, what I was giving him wasn't what he wanted from me. He took a yearlong mission outside of the village, going around Fire on solo-patrols near the borders. I didn't fall into a funk because he'd already lifted me out of one. Instead I let myself get picked up by a nice girl from the Hyuuga branch family. I," does Sakura really want to know this? Of course she does, she already has your spilling your guts. If you stop now she might break all the bones in your hand. And then she'll work her way up your arm. You swear, if Ibiki should ever get wind of her interrogation techniques… "I might have married her, but her entire team got wiped out on an S-rank mission. I've never known the details. I'm glad she died on a mission though, she was rebellious enough to get herself killed by her own family because of that damned curse."

"But what about Gai? I can't have you leading him on, Kakashi! You've already hurt him once!" If only she knew the half of it. You'd already healed from your loss of Kaguya when Gai returned, so your pursuit of him when he returned from his mission had been purely from your own heart. He turned you down by countering your every attempt with "So you challenge me again, my Eternal Rival!" That was in public. He had told you once in private that he would take you when you stopped lying to yourself about liking women. For once in his life, Gai had been wrong about your inner workings—you would give your affections to whoever would give you theirs, be they man or woman. You had even gone so far as to tell him that.

"He's hurt me as well, Sakura my love," that shut her up properly, "he rejected me when he got back, for not having pure intentions, for not wanting him and him alone—he wouldn't trust me that this time I really did. So I withdrew, before I'd wrecked things he'd been my friend. I went back to treating him like I did before, as a sign I respected the line he'd drawn as well as a way of saying I wasn't going to cross it to meet him there." You smell tears in the air, and you know that your girlfriend's face is blotchy, and her eyes are probably as pink as her hair from tears.

Great. Now she thinks she's keeping the two of you apart.

"Sakura, don't cry. I did something which ruined Gai's trust in me, and I moved on because I wanted a relationship with someone who trusted me. Now, you, I trust you. Don't cry for some tragic lost cause." Gradually her tears stop, and despite your words to the contrary you appreciate that they did fall. You've never wept (Obito wept, but he hardly counts. He really sucks as a ninja, showing his emotions willy-nilly) for your loss. Someone needed to.

"Kakashi, I trust you, I love you. And if you're using me I'll pound you to a pulp again. And then I'll tell Tsunade what you did." The serious mood turns into a different kind of serious. You're suddenly very glad that you know all of your intentions with Sakura and you're glad that they're not shadowy in the least.

"Understood."


	6. Reluctant Rokudaime / Little Old Ladies Armed to the Teeth

"Kakashi," you glance up from your book to gaze at the Hokage as she stands menacingly above your hospital bed. Her blond hair is well kempt, indicating she's at least slept since you got out of surgery. You try to not feel a twinge of guilt at the blisters of chakra burns on her fingertips, because she can still pummel you. You hate being bedridden for this very fact—scary people with fists of doom can sneak up on you and you can't even get away. Sakura didn't even defend you, she's just napping happily under your arm.

"…Yes, Hokage-sama?" If you play innocent, she won't yell at you.

"You should know better by now than to come home so completely mashed up—I would much rather treat a team-full of lightly beaten up ANBU than feverishly work to save the life of a masochist such as yourself. You are lucky I'm very good at what I do, otherwise you'd never be able to throw shuriken Left Style ever again. Your arm, from the elbow down to your wrist, came to me far more floppy than it is now. Idiot." You scowl at her—you were conscious for that conversation with her, your arm was mostly working fine. It just hurt like hell. She scowls right back at you.

"Your ANBU mission clearance is being revoked, and you're also being taken off active duty for the time being. You need some time to have that shoulder heal, and I can't have you killing yourself in the prime of life." Her voice is calm, her eyes level, as she takes away your family's livelihood. Sakura can't possibly be the breadwinner for the six of you, she already works too much. Missions haven't been bringing as much as they used to, not even for you, the Copy Nin. And you don't have any other trade than being a field operative. You could teach, but then you'd have the same hours as Sakura, no one would be home with the kids…

"And I'll be mentoring you for the position of the Rokudaime." You wrench yourself up from the bed, startling your wife awake, and stare aghast at Tsunade. She's smiling serenely in that freaky way of hers which says to anyone watching that she's being devious.

"Godaime-sama, you've been Hokage for just over a decade, I'm sure you don't need to retire yet and then there's Naruto—"

"Naruto is not nearly mature enough for the position!" her shout rings in your ears in the most unpleasant of ways, "He's only just been promoted to Special Jounin. Neither does he have the years of diplomatic missions under his belt that you do. And I'm certainly not the strongest shinobi in the village, not even the best medic-nin," she smiles sweetly at Sakura at this, "and you need to be around for your family." She has a valid point, but not one you want to cede to her this easily.

"But I don't _want_ to be Hokage," you even raise your voice, something you rarely do. Even if she is the Hokage, she can't order you to take her job, only the elders can do that. "You can't make me do this, Tsunade-sama. You don't have that power, only the—" She smirks in a way which is hardly comforting. Sakura has told you that when she herself heals people she has a lot of time to think about things, that it's become so second nature to her that she doesn't have to actively concentrate unless the injuries are really serious. Sakura also smirks when she has the upper hand on you, just like Tsunade just smirked at you. The Hokage had spent nine hours in surgery on you, which means she's had far longer than you to think about this. One of her hands (hopefully not clenched into a fist of doom) dives in and out of her pocket at lightning speed.

"Oh, but the elders and I have come to an agreement about you. You are quite the only person they'll take for the job."

The scroll which she delicately holds in front of your face has the daimyo's seal, the individual and joint seals of the elders, and the signature and mark of the positively evil Godaime who stands at the side of your bed. At the top, it reads, "Let all the nation of Fire be notified, knowledgeable, and agreed to the following appointment of Hatake Kakashi to the position of Rokud—" and then the world goes fuzzy as you feel a faint coming on.

* * *

 

You learn more about being Hokage from the people surrounding the position than from the actual woman herself. Izumo and Kotetsu have worked in and around the bureaucracy for years, and both Sakura and Shizune are well-versed in what needs to get signed and what needs to be replied to. So this explains some of the horribly long nights Sakura would pull when you were dating, years ago.

You can't even shirk your work with this position, even if you do show up late to the Tower, you've already been forced to do work at _home_ by Sakura.

"Really, Kakashi, it won't pile up as long as you stay on top of it! There isn't all that much to do, only a few hours at most," is a common motivator she adopts. Once you begin to finish all the paperwork at the Tower, however, it stops following you home. Which is a vastly marked improvement compared to trying to answer formal letters while Takara and Takeo cry, or Akihito and Masato fight with each other. Your wife is happier to see you at dinner rather than bringing it to you in the living-room-turned-office.

But you begin to feel impotent in the goings on of the village. You watch as members of the Rookie Nine go out on missions, as well as all of your colleagues your own age. Tsunade is right that Naruto is not yet fit for the title he so staunchly pursues. But at least right now he is going out every day and risking his life for what he believes in. You can't even _force_ yourself to get a papercut. That would be giving credence to everyone's assessment that you're a masochist.

It's not exactly depression which grips you, but on one of your few days off Sakura drags you down to one of the Jounin training fields where Gai is already waiting. The fact that you fight for three hours and come out of it at a solid draw comforts you. Your long fight with your old friend cheers you up in ways you didn't even know you needed cheering in. You're still _you_. You're still Sharingan no Kakashi, son of the White Fang of Konoha. Yes, Konoha has lost one of its better field operatives, but the village still has men and women like Gai going out every day to defend it.

The long spar also opens your eyes to the fact that being offline means you can actually spend time with your children—your two eldest and the infants Takara and Takeo. You'd been strong-armed into teaching a Genin team when Akihito and Masato had been babies, you only remember snippets of their early lives—coming home to Sakura telling you Akihito could tie his shoes or Masato was walking. You hadn't fully grasped how much you've missed until you help Takara edge her way across the living room on her own two feet. Your family life is suddenly within your reach in a way you'd never known before.

Now you can actually say you'll train with either of the older boys on a given day—and _be_ there. You never let them get their hopes up before because there was (still is, actually) unrest in Ame which is rippling out through the nations, you could've been called away on a mission at any moment. You hadn't wanted them to think you didn't value their efforts by skipping out on them. But being offline means you aren't on the mission roster, which means you can't be called away. You're on desk duty essentially.

It's on one of these new days of training with Akihito that you notice something you've seen before: perfect chakra control. To test it, you teach him a delicate and complicated base sign for a wind jutsu. The full jutsu itself is far too hard for a boy of five, it's something you struggled to master for your Jounin promotion exam, but the base is something which will easily tell you of your son's chakra control abilities. For several days he struggles, but a brief stint at teaching Naruto is enough to teach patience even to you, so you don't mind helping him with finger patterns and other problems which arise. By the end of the week your son has the base mastered (tempting you to push him to learn the next few signs, but prudence and past experience warns against such a course of action), and you tell Sakura of your finding.

"It's a minor bloodline limit, at least in my family. Not anything to speak of, however, because it's something which occurs in some shinobi in general. It's just if your name is Haruno, it can be expected that you have perfect chakra control. That's just how it is," you are a bit crestfallen that your news isn't exactly new to her, "but," she continues, "Akihito inherited your chakra patterns. The fact that you're his father gives him a good chance of being an excellent shinobi in the future—but if he's got perfect chakra control…There'll be no waste of energy," her eyes sparkle with pride, "even _you_ waste tiny amounts of chakra. If you help him, and he gets the right teachers, he'll surpass you one day. Unless of course one of his four younger siblings is even more of a prodigy than he is."

"Sakura, we've only got Masato and the twins after Akihi—WHAT? How?"

"Surely you know where babies come from by now, Kakashi," she growls as she punches your shoulder— _hard._

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You _do_ sometimes do the things you say you were doing. Not every excuse is a lie, just most of them. Helping an old lady across the street as reason for today's tardiness for your lunchdate with Sakura isn't a lie. She's lucky you aren't lying to her, but she takes it like you are. If only she knew the half of it.

* * *

 

Half an hour ago you were speeding across the rooftops of Konoha, single-mindedly bent on your goal of the little café Sakura had chosen for lunch. You'd been there before with her once, having randomly picked it for a change in the usual bento boxes you would bring her during her midday break. Apparently you'd chosen well all those months ago, because she still periodically had breakfast or lunch with you there. You saw, however, Obito's Good Deed of the Day making her way slowly across the square in front of the Hokage tower.

Today's good deed was an elderly woman. She was ancient, bent and wrinkled—you won't tell Sakura this, but you do hope that you both grow old, and that Sakura looks like this one day. She'd be adorable—and one of the wheels on her walker was broken. Each step forward only took her about three inches. You dropped down to the ground and offered to help her across the square.

The wizened old lady smiled up at you through her wrinkles and you took that as permission to lift her up. That wasn't, however, what the little ancient had wanted. She told you so with senbon—you'll find out later that she's Genma's great-great grandmother, and that throwing needles are a Shiranui thing—and she was still pretty handy with them. You were never more thankful for the synthetic armored fabric your uniform is made of, and you were also quite content to simply hold her walker and let her take your elbow. It had taken twenty minutes to get across the square.

You really doubt it that Sakura will believe you if you elaborate to her about an adorable old lady who just happened to be armed to the teeth. Neither will she likely believe you if you tell her that said elderly woman took you by surprise with throwing needles.

A lesson from Minato-sensei comes back to your mind as you look into Sakura's disbelieving eyes. About a young Genin on sentry duty who kept sending false-alerts to a neighboring guardhouse, and when he finally was in trouble he sent for help and no one came. The lesson had been given to Obito, but Minato-sensei made you and Rin also memorize it because of him. You'd been very frustrated with Obito that day—couldn't he learn to be on time? It's kind of freaky how many lessons which had been only for Obito have stuck with you for so many years. This is the first time, however, that this particular lesson has come to bite you so hard in the butt.

You made a habit of tardiness as a way of keeping Obito alive after his death—your—HIS— _your_ Sharingan wasn't nearly enough, because it had to be hidden most of the time otherwise you'd experience constant chakra exhaustion. You also began to spend a lot of time at the memorial stone. You had a reason to be there, not only because of Obito's death, but you had finally given the written OK to have your father's name added to it. Ever since his suicide a strange guilt had gripped a few key officials who actively pulled strings to have a letter sent to you every year. It always said the same thing, "So and So-san wishes to encourage you to write a letter on behalf of your father's brave life and have his name added to the memorial stone, yadda, yadda, yadda."

You took your time with your introspections, enumerating your worries and concerns, as well as your few joys, to those two loved ones. You live the life which your father didn't choose—a hard, high road—with the help of Obito's perseverance. Rin tried to cling to you back then, but you didn't turn to her for comfort. Neither did you comfort her. The two of you had grown apart, with a seemingly unrelenting abyss of personal experience between you. She took a solo A-rank eventually and only her body was ever recovered. You found yourself able to tell her the things you couldn't tell her when she was alive, like saying sorry for not being there for her when you should have. But both you and she know you're only saying that because you have to, "being there for her" wasn't the relationship Rin had wanted with you.

Sensei didn't seem to notice. He had been made Hokage, and his wife was pregnant. He had more than enough on his plate, he couldn't worry about his failed team anymore. You didn't bother him with yourself, joining ANBU instead. The long hours and dangerous missions were conducive to your newly empty life—with no team and no teacher, no lover and no parent you would have been utterly alone for a second time in your life. ANBU was the logical choice. You were assigned as one of his personal assistants, and you think he always knew who you were under your double mask.

Your time was unevenly divided between your eighteen hour shifts for ANBU (being on duty as an assistant meant twelve hours on at the Hokage tower, and another six at headquarters usually), your four hours of sleep, and your two solid hours at the memorial stone. That was until Sensei died, sacrificing himself for his village like the First and Second Hokage. When Sarutobi returned as the Third, he requested that Ookami-kun be assigned to protecting Uzumaki Naruto. Your hours changed. They were whatever you wanted them to be, as long as you logged them. You took a cut in pay—Sarutobi said there was no hazard in guarding the boy, and so regular hourly D-rank pay would be sufficient—to be the boy's babysitter. You were fine with it, the kid was the last remnant of Sensei—Yondaime's wife having died at some point during the night of the Kyuubi attack.

Naruto doesn't know it, but he spent most of his infancy in your arms as you knelt in front of the memorial stone. When he started to learn how to walk Sarutobi took him back, treating him as his own grandchild as best he could. You were still assigned to making sure no misguided villagers made any moves against the kid. Since you didn't have time for a girlfriend as you babysat Yondaime's son—you'd always known that Naruto would prove to eventually be an expert ninja (somehow, somehow, you'd prayed every night while he'd been on your Genin team years later) because the toddler was an escape artist at three—you began to read Icha Icha. You were old enough, and the writing was actually pretty decent. Not fine-grade poetry, not something which should be preserved for future generations and revered like the simple poems written by the First Hokage were but…it was decent. Readable, and it grew on you eventually.

Things did that with you, once something hammered its way into your routine it stayed there. Your excuses, your books, your mask, your girlfriend, all the pieces of yourself which have gotten in through the chinks in your armor, leaving the armor more perfect that it was before. Especially your girlfriend—she'd beaten you senseless to make you see sense where she was concerned.

Of course just now, being a half hour late to lunch with her, she might just beat you senseless for the hell of it.


	7. Hospital Directive #R23861-A / Scarecrows, Plastic, and Floral Green

When Sasuke finds your team and gives himself up in the middle of a swamp in Kiri you're surprised. The boy is half-blind, with black malicious chakra, and he's incredibly strong. There is barely a glimmer in his eyes of who he should be, who Naruto wants him to be. You wish he'd put up a fight, because you'd have a reason to kill him. Because then you wouldn't have to talk about the past with your wife. Because then you wouldn't have to protect her from this madman. Sasuke can _only_ be mad if he thinks that by giving up voluntarily he'll be saved from eventual execution. You don't mention it to him, when he surrenders, because you feel that if he is in enough of a dream-world that he thinks he'll be accepted back…well, he's probably a good deal happier there than in the world everyone else is living in.

The one thing he sneers at—really, being a captive doesn't suit the brat—is the lack of Sakura on the team. Apparently he doesn't know the team broke up and that Team Kakashi this mission consists of Naruto, Sai, Ten— _Yamato_ , and yourself. Team Fifteen is being led by Hatake Sakura, a team which is currently undergoing several months of intense taijutsu training from Rock Lee. Your wife is on maternity leave. Sasuke really needs to get a better handle on his Fire Country gossip…

"Uchiha, it would be prudent to keep your own twisted counsel about the Hag, she's on sick leave." Trust Sai to communicate something so eloquently. This one time you appreciate his awkward social skills, though even you originally thought of him as a Sasuke replacement. He's not a replacement, he's a good teammate. Sasuke's filmy (yet oddly piercing…wow you didn't think that Uchihas could _be_ creepier after Shisui left you for his cousin) eyes flick over to Naruto to see what the uncontainable young man has to say about this.

The kid is nodding sagely in that way of his, his own misguided way of telling everyone that they lost him at the last outpost. Sasuke sighs in a way which tells you immediately of the company he's been keeping—lackeys. You hate lackeys. They're just Yes-ninja who exist to confirm opinions and put forward none of their own. They are also supposed to trip over one another to answer a question.

Sasuke's eyes rove over to Tenz…Yamato…and he apparently decides that _that_ conversation isn't worth having. Leaving you, last for some strange reason. Does he know? Likely not—he probably surrendered himself in the hopes of bullying Sakura into pumping out babies for him, and getting out of his execution by way of a loophole. One just about can't learn how to use the Sharingan from anyone but an Uchiha, _you_ had to learn to use Obito's eye from his father who had (luckily) felt sorry for you. If Konoha wanted the Sharingan back, then it would have to keep at least one Uchiha alive to teach it's secrets.

Rather than have this fight later, with drama and realizations and flashbacks and yelling, you elect to own up to the young nukenin.

"My wife is recovering from having our first child. She had a difficult time of it and is resting at the hospital. My son Akihito was born nine days ago just before dawn."

* * *

You wish you were in a profession which allowed for civilian habits like smoking. Or maybe you should wish you had that devil-may-care attitude that Asuma had had. Smoking leaves terrible and easily traced smells on your person, and you still haven't quite let go of your anal retentiveness of thirteen. You really wish that your son would just hurry it up, if he only knew what he is doing to his father! You're jittery, but you feel like it's merited, you've been sitting still for eleven hours, you've been praying, worrying, almost begging for knowledge of how things were going. Your own mother didn't survive your birth— _but she didn't have Tsunade-hime for her doctor, it'll be fine. But what if it's not—what if—no, she'll be okay, babies are normal right?_ —and Sakura's little peeps of agony, which had grown louder the closer you got to the hospital, play havoc in your mind even now. Tsunade's face turning from happy to serious hadn't helped either, as she helped you set Sakura on her own feet.

You got kicked out for worrying the patient after a half hour, by Sakura no less.

You totally don't jump out of your skin when a hand settles heavily on your shoulder. Only one person could have caught your reactive punch this way, and you gaze up into Gai's face. You don't have to beg your friend to understand how freaked out you are, he's known you since the two of you were three or four. He stalked you for most of your teenage years. You'd tried to explain it to a civilian girlfriend once, that stalking was a sign of extreme affection among ninja. Knowing everything about a person, networking to gather more—the more you'd talked the more distant she'd become. She broke up with you later that same week. Civilians just didn't understand the mental shift that went on in a person when they committed themselves being a ninja.

Gai had stalked you for probably longer, and he still kind of does stalk you, but that ship has passed. He's still here for you though, in just the way that you need.

You're not allowed to hit each other in the hospital—there's a rule, even. _Hospital Directive #R23861-A: Hatake Kakashi and Maito Gai shall not engage in sparring matches on hospital grounds, nor shall they engage in trading blows while on hospital grounds;_ and _Hospital Directive #R23861-B Aforementioned shinobi sparring matches, to an extent of two hundred feet above the hospital building proper, also being prohibited_. Since you can't hit each other (at all, not even 'punch-you, punch-me' games, it's because of one of those that directive –A exists), the two of you begin playing lightning fast games of Rock, Paper, Scissors. If you win, you say, Gai has to make Lee train Sakura's Genin team while she's on her maternity leave. Gai says that if he wins you can't ever name one of your kids after him. You have to win this. You hate Sakura's team. Unlike Team Seven, when you say that you hate your wife's team, Team Fifteen, you _mean_ it. You really mean it. You mean it like you mean your _nindo_. If you stopped hating Team Fifteen (made up of an Inuzuka, a Yamanaka cousin of Ino's, and a Sarutobi) you think you'd stop breathing.

And then there's the fact that you also really want to have the _option_ of naming your kids (maybe two or three, right?) after people who are important to you. Options are good, always good, for a shinobi, and you can't let Gai take one away from you. You don't mention that you and Sakura have already got this one's name all figured out.

With so much on the line—if you don't foist Sakura's team on someone, it falls to _you_ to babysit them—you put all of your stress about Sakura and the baby into your game. After three hours Gai pipes up, asking when this challenge shall conclude. It can't have anything to do with the fact that the score stands at 1349 to 1240 in his favor.

"When the baby is born or when I'm allowed back in that room," is your terse answer.

* * *

You smile civilly under your mask at Sasuke as the boy realizes he's given himself up for nothing. Too bad you ordered your team, more than a year ago, to neutralize the Uchiha if he were to fall into their hands. Sasuke had passively allowed himself to be trussed up in a way which, even with your genius and the Sharingan, might pose a problem for _you_. And then his sour little face disappears underneath a hood administered by Sai.

As you pass Naruto you lay a hand on his shoulder and look him in the eye. The moment lasts forever while you hold his gaze, but it was not even a blink of time as you let him go to lead your team on home. It will be hard for Naruto to bring Sasuke back after all these years when all the young man will face is humiliation and eventual death. Although Sasuke must have reformed or reordered his lifegoals since you last encountered him (because you know for a chilling fact that his brother is not yet dead) he's done too much for Konoha to let him back into the fold. Perhaps he reasoned it out eventually that the safest place to gain power was where it was safe, and that to revive a clan one had to be alive to do it. He is too late.

One of the worst nightmares most shinobi have is of arriving too late. Early on, it's arriving late to the Academy classes, then to summer training camps, then on to missions, then battles and so on. Sasuke probably hadn't just now realized a fear of coming to the scene too late because of an Uchiha-sized self-confidence and likely several other complexes. The boy is _that_ confident.

* * *

You win the game, by a miracle. In the five thousands you had caught up to Gai and you were neck and neck. You were tied at 5623, when Tsunade had sent her attendant out to get you. You and Gai had been about to reveal your choices as the door opened. The woman would act as witness to a life-changing win for one of you, and, as you revealed Paper and Gai kept his fist tightly clenched as Rock, that win had gone to you.

You were out of the woods with Sakura's mutant team, but the orderly had only been sent out to gently tell you of Sakura's condition and to caution you to keep your voice down. You are quaking like a leaf—not really, but for an ex-ANBU you're downright shuddering—until Gai takes both of your shoulders and propels you into the room. He thankfully doesn't let go until you are next to Sakura's bed. They've changed the sheets and the like, but the room still smells like battle and Sakura is a great deal paler than you'd like. She looks up at you, weak, tired, and pleased with herself, but her smile is dimmed from whatever injury she's nursing. Your Sakura is in pain. Where are the doctors in this place anyway? This isn't irrationality, it's plain and simple concern, there should be at least nine people in here—

"Kakashi, she'll be fine, you don't need to worry about her. Now, what're you two calling this kiddo?" Tsunade has appeared at your side as you've inspected your wife with an untrained eye. In the Hokage's arms is a white swaddling cloth very full of a newborn infant. His skin is an angry red, showing how _not_ impressed he is with getting dragged out into open air. Very suddenly he's being thrust in your face, startling you into wrapping your arms around him to keep this careless doctor-type from dropping your son. It's awkward at first, it's been decades since you held an infant, but it's nearly instinct that tells you how to hold him _just so_.

"Akihito," you breathe reverently. Gai relaxes from wherever he's hiding out of your sight, you can feel it. He's sleeping, with his eyes crunched up tightly, and his tiny hands balled up into tiny fists. In the sudden stillness of the room you can hear him breathing.

* * *

One of Sasuke's whiny mumbles reaches your ears and makes you laugh, no, it makes you cackle out loud for nearly a mile. He certainly has declined in intelligence over the years—he is no "bright boy."

"She'd probably just have a lot of pink haired kids anyway. Then she could be cheating and I'd never know..." You're too busy giggling to contradict the imprisoned young man, and the comment would have lapsed away unanswered if not for Sai.

"The father of The Hag's baby is doubtless Kakashi-san, Uchiha, because he is the only ninja in the village with that peculiar hair color and cowlick. Both of which are present in the infant." Thank the gods for Sai, and his blunt eloquence. It is that same eloquence which keeps Sasuke silent for the rest of the trip home.

* * *

The first thing you do when you get home is break into your wife's hospital room and lay down next to her. Sakura puts one arm around you, her other one already occupied by Akihito. She's feeding him, half of her hospital gown pulled down from her shoulder, and he is tucked securely to her chest. You hardly dare to breathe as you listen to him burble softly, tiny "hnn's" escaping his nose. The worry of the mission, and it's grime—both physical and mental—seem to melt away as see and hear your own flesh and blood begin to thrive.

Akihito's bright silver hair, just a touch closer to white than yours, and how he has lit up your life…The kid has lived up to his name already.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Kakashi spends a week in the hospital after Floral Green beat the crap out of him. He whines and pouts to you how unfairly he's been treated in this mess, he's just trying to be honorable for once in his life. All bloated exaggerations. He's summoned you to the hospital to keep a look-out for Floral Green, and whenever she gets close to the hospital room he pretends to be asleep. Not such a bad thing, she really did do a number on him. Who knew that there was a head-to-head counter to Raikiri? A medical nin, of course.

You don't try to reason with him, he's in enough mental turmoil as it is without you telling him that Floral Green will be the best thing that's ever happened to him. She genuinely cares for him, and his efforts to shut her out hurt her more than she ever lets on around the man. Kakashi has a good nose (why he covers it up is a mystery, really), but your nose is better. As soon as the pink haired girl is out of range of Kakashi she stops somewhere and cries. She doesn't have a focused scent then, just one full of sadness. For a genius prodigy, Kakashi really is an idiot. Floral Green will let him go if he says that's what he really wants, and she probably won't take him back when he comes to his senses. Not only because she'll have given up on him—she'll be taken.

The freaky human who smells eternally of hair gel and stretchy plastic follows her around when she's not at the hospital. He doesn't seem to use anything other than stealth to track her, concealing himself in the weirdest of places (large, leafy ferns are his favorite, easy to get in and out of apparently). This human will swoop in and bound away with Floral Green if given half a chance's encouragement. If Kakashi tells this girl he doesn't want her, she will after a while find someone who _does_ want her. If only Kakashi weren't such an excellent shinobi to whom lying comes second nature.

You know he's been torn up about this for at least a year, avoiding the hospital except for days when the Hokage's apprentice just happened to be on duty. It looks like happenstance that the days Hatake Kakashi decides to go to the hospital coincide with the days she works…sometimes. If you weren't looking, you'd never see a pattern emerge because he never goes to the hospital unless he is severely injured, not even for checkups. And if you began to see the clues, he would skip regularly scheduled appointments, even if one of them was with her. He has been throwing people off his trail for months, and it would have worked if you weren't a tracker. Floral Green apparently is a tracker too, because she realized the same thing.

And then, according to Kakashi, taking not a leaf out of his book but out of Naruto's, she decided to be subtle in the most obvious of ways. He'd come home after the party he went to, his whole left side infested with the girl's scent, and proceeded to have a panic attack. Only your paws (wonderfully soft as they are) on his chest and your head curled up to his neck kept him from hyperventilating completely. You'd held him down on the floor of his apartment for an hour. He could have knocked you off at any time and begun tearing at his hair (not all of that thirty degree angle was natural) or something far more destructive, but having another heartbeat next to his kept him calm enough to not do that.

He hadn't told you what she'd done to him until a week later, and that was when he actually admitted to everything you'd seen him do in the last year. Weeks had passed after that night, and the girl once again took things into her own hands, landing Kakashi squarely in the hospital.

* * *

 

"You know, Pakkun, I think I will ask her out when I get out of here." Kakashi's voice, quiet and pensive, wakes you up from a lovely nap. At least he's mumbling about doing something productive, _finally_. Of course this might mean nothing, because yesterday he'd giggled himself to sleep at the idea of leaving the village because of this. The day before that he'd listed out all of his faults compared to all of the good things about Sakura. When he'd first regained consciousness three days ago he'd mumbled on and on about trying to not be a letch but it was just so hard when Sakura just wouldn't leave him alone. Kakashi's mental health is apparently hanging by a thread, and it's all almost all his own doing. At least this newest revelation does some good for both people involved. Humans are the weirdest creatures, you swear.

"I mean, she likes me, and it's not like she's looking for some easy promotion. She's Jounin and happy with that," he trails off for a bit, rubbing his ANBU tattoo absently. The tattoo is concealed underneath his sleeve, but he does this often enough that you know what he's up to. "And it would be nice to have a girlfriend…"

"Kakashi?"

"Yeah?" he's looking out of his window, out across the village.

"You've gotta go out with her only if you like her too. Otherwise you'll hurt her and then _she'll_ hurt _you_."

He chuckles softly, reaching out to rub your fur backwards. You growl in annoyance at his antics. "I think I have that part covered, Pakkun. It was never the problem of me not liking her, since this started. The problem's been that she's just turned eighteen. I'm almost twice her age—I'm _thirty two._ How can she want a broken man like me? What will it do to me when she realizes this and leaves me? When she turns twenty six, I'll be forty." You'd never really considered that aspect of it before, and it saddens you. Humans were like dogs, they needed companionship, it's why dogs and humans got on so well. But Kakashi needs companionship from his own kind.

"But she'll just keep beating me up if I don't ask her out. Maybe I do have a problem with inflicting pain on myself…Never really believed that rumor about myself before." You hold your tongue about the fact that the girl, Floral Green, _Sakura_ , could probably have anyone she wanted and that she wants Kakashi. For a lot longer than a little, too, if the long discussions she has with her blond friend, Pomegranate, are to be believed in the least.

What? You're a nin, of course you followed the mission target around, what kind of idiot would think to do otherwise?

"Now if only she'd release me from the hospital…Eh, I'll just go." With that your partner in your summoning contract drags himself out of his bed. He wobbles, and his muscles shake (that girl had still had chakra left after demolishing Kakashi), but he perseveres. As he slowly makes his way around the room looking for his things, you don't tell him a distinct Floral Green smell is making it's way towards the room. He's the impatient one who wants to go home, away from the awful smelling hospital.

He jumps but you don't when the door swings open slowly— _she's_ good at not surprising him, when he's in high stress situations like being confined to the hospital. Normally Kakashi will sleep right through one of her visits to him when he's hospitalized, but the slightest noise from any other medic in his room will wake him without fail. He probably jumped because he's not supposed to be escaping from the hospital.

"Kakashi! Get back in bed, you're not supposed to be up. Do the words 'chakra exhaustion' mean _nothing_ to you? You could give yourself a heart attack!" And _he's_ good at worrying medics to the point of hysteria, even her.

"I respectfully decline the suggestion," he starts—"It's NOT a sugges-"—"but I would like to go home for a change of clothes. After that I will be dragging myself out to the restaurant two blocks down from my apartment, and I expect you to be there as well." He trails off, looking anywhere but at her. Humans are strange creatures, a fact which is old hat to you by now. When she doesn't answer he finally looks up at her, making direct eye contact. "I don't know, of course, how long any of that will take with me in this condition. I'll send one of—"

"He'll send me," you interrupt. After all of the stress he's put you through recently, it's the least he can do to not replace you at the very end of things. He smiles at you underneath his mask and Sakura gapes.

"You ask me out and you're going to send your dog to pick me up? And you decide the best time for all of this is when you're half dead?" If you weren't so loyal to Kakashi you might have slunk out of the room then to avoid being part of this fight. If the last few days weren't proof of deteriorating mental abilities in Kakashi, this might just be an indicator of him having gone round the bend. But you're going to weather this storm with him to the end.

"Sakura, it will be well past closing time if I go across town to your apartment. I can barely move as it is. If we just meet each other at this place then I won't exhaust myself completely and you won't have to wait for me to get there." There are tremors all over his body as he struggles to stand, but to your astonishment his voice doesn't catch or waver. Sakura scowls her Medic Scowl at him.

"Why can't you just get back in bed and I bring something for the two of us? You really need to be lying down right now, Kakashi." You whine slightly at the opening she just gave him, because he really is a pervert whether he falls to Naruto's "test" or not.

"Would you be lying in b—Oof!" Sakura's patience has run out and she pushes him back into bed and straps him down with chakra ropes. She smells worried, but also a good deal happier than she was when she came in.

"I'll be back at six with dinner. Other than no tempura, what do you want?" with a longsuffering sigh, Kakashi answers, not even wriggling against his restraints. He's finally resigned himself to being bedridden, and hopefully also to being with the pink haired medic. You'd hate to see her go to that human who smells of hair gel and stretchy plastic.


	8. All Parents Need ANBU Training / Where Masato Wins but Loses Out

"Kakashi! The bookshelf! What—the—it's—"

"Alphabetized?"

"When did you do this?"

"Few nights ago. Couldn't sleep."

* * *

You feel guilty about being away during the day—sometimes _days_ —leaving her with Akihito to even the wee hours of the morning. Just because you and Sakura just became parents doesn't let you get off easy or have extra time off. That time off is for Sakura, and she well needs it, you know. And besides, the civil war in Ame isn't going to slack off, and the wayward shinobi said war is throwing out are threats to Konoha's safety which cannot be ignored. Nukenin don't take vacations, so that means neither can you.

So because you can't be around during the day for your family, you thank the gods for your reenlistment in ANBU. The training had gotten you back on an eighteen to twenty hour day. It is meant to allow for dangerous missions, to avoid fatigue. If a light doze of an hour is all an operative can get, then it wasn't nearly so bad for them if all they usually got was three or four hours.

ANBU training is also, handily enough, almost perfectly suited for parenting. You've known this for over twenty years, as Naruto sometimes tested the limits of your abilities when he was but an infant. Akihito, being _your_ son, is—of course—much more difficult. For one thing he breathes very softly. You and Sakura check on him constantly—she says that for some unknown reason, babies sometimes just forget to breathe. Way to keep you from worrying, thanks Sakura. Really. You don't have enough on your plate as-is, what with someone else's civil war to clean up. Sheesh. You wish you could just fall into your wife's arms after long missions, or just lay down in the nursery to listen to your son breathe.

But you can't.

Because of either your sleep-schedule or pure adrenaline, you often come home wired, not nearly ready for bed yet. So you can rarely fall asleep for at least a few hours most nights, and you just feel so _guilty_ for leaving your family so much. You feel guilty for saddling Sakura with the most difficult part of parenting, the first few months, and you feel guilty for not knowing the little silver haired baby who smiles so cheerily at you and Sakura. So after a week of bashing yourself in your head as you paced the apartment, you'd come to a solution. Not a perfect thing, but good enough.

You started to do the chores which weren't done from the day: the dishes, the wash, reorganizing (and alphabetizing) the bookshelf, mopping the kitchen floor, writing the grocery list— _getting_ the groceries on particularly bad nights when you are awake right up until dawn when the first vendors in the market open their booths—making a few ready-made meals for the week for Sakura…The things you'd normally let lapse. The things you wouldn't do if you were around all the time. Maybe. You might've done them in that alternate world where there wasn't a civil war in Ame, but you highly doubt it.

And you also keep Akihito quiet, letting Sakura sleep for as long as she needs. The kid sleeps through the night mostly alright, and when he does wake up he seems to just need a change. He's rarely hungry at night, but sometimes he is (you hand him off to Sakura for the times when he is). Most of the time he just sleeps.

It's an excellent way for you to monitor your son—no son of yours will forget to breathe of all things—as well as make sure he doesn't bother your wife.

You tote the baby around while you go about your business in the apartment. You gently go through the alphabet with him, A, K, G, S, Z, J, T, D, N, H, B, P, M, Y, R, W, with all the vowel variations, as you reorder the bookcase (for the seventh time, Sakura apparently hasn't noticed this particular chore yet. She still puts the books back in the wrong places). Your boy can hold up his head at this age, and his eyes still flick interestedly between your face and the books you re-shelve. He's too little to remember it, you figure, but your voice keeps him quiet and calm when he's feeling like being awake.

You put him in the high chair as you do the dishes, if he's awake. If he's asleep you grab a blanket from his room and lay him out on it. The clink of glass doesn't bother the kid, nor the clicks of the chopsticks Sakura adores. He's blissed out on being asleep.

Organizing the dirty clothes and putting them in the washer and then the dryer is one of the activities you can do while you hold him to your side. His tiny, but strong, heartbeat near your own calms you in ways you'd never thought possible a few years ago.

You also take him on adventures through the pantry, taking stock of what's fine, what's low, what's out, the works. He's sometimes awake for the few adventures you take to the market at dawn. Akihito typically rouses himself near dawn anyway, and you take him out of the house so he can't fuss at his mother too much. The vendors smile at you and your son when you take him with you, to which you reply with a polite nod and Akihito replies with a blinding, toothless smile. The kid is going to be a lady-killer by seven, you bet.

* * *

You'll be glad when Kakashi's ANBU enlistment ends—you aren't supposed to know he's in ANBU, but with his tattoos (the ANBU stylized wolf on his shoulder, the leaf on his bicep)marking him as part of the group and his constant S-rank missions are also a dead give-away. He is always exhausted, although thankfully rarely wounded, and he's missing watching his son begin to grow up. And he knows it, too.

He and his nervous energy get things done around the apartment in the dead of night—you must be more exhausted than usual if you sleep through him starting the dryer—and you rarely see him conscious when you're home. At least in the mornings, he'll sleep until six or seven depending on when he gets to bed. You know he's come back barely alive from a mission when you see his tired smile as you scuff into the kitchen in the mornings at six. He always makes coffee for you on those mornings, and sits with you until at least eight. He doesn't drink any of the stuff, needing to be asleep soon, but he sits and laughs, seeming to bask in your early morning grumpiness and Akihito swiftly waking with the sun.

Sometimes you stay up waiting for him, wanting to wrap your arms around him more than you want tomorrow's chores done. You usually end up wrapping a lot more than just your arms around him those nights, because you miss him and he has missed you, and sex is the simplest way that the two of you can be so close together that you can _feel_ one another's heartbeat. And sometimes he will be so wired from his missions that even when he's worn _you_ out, you haven't worn _him_ out. But rather than leaving you alone (to get rid of the rest of his energy) to go wash the dishes or recheck the traps he has on the windows or obsessively fold clothing or any other compulsive, nervous thing he does, he will lay awake holding you until he falls asleep as well.

It's after those nights you spend with him that he looks the most rested, far more easily reconciled to his job than other mornings. He can only be on active ANBU rotation for another thirteen months, after that he will have to take a mandatory leave of absence from the group for fifteen months. The leave is mandatory for all the black ops, because after two years the strain will break a man. He told you in his roundabout way, telling you that he was sure to get a break from all the S-ranks after a bit more than a year. It was almost too much to hope, so you'd ambushed Sai and forced him to tell you how long an operative could remain 'online' for a time. He'd confirmed Kakashi's timeline, in a roundabout way of course, for you.

And then there were all the other missions which would fill up Kakashi's time when he wasn't out on one of his assassination missions which he couldn't tell you about (not that you particularly wanted to know. It just would have been nice if he could tell you if he was coming home or not when he got his mission scrolls). Tsunade well knew the capabilities of the Copy Nin and she actively sent Team Kakashi (Kakashi, Yamato, Naruto, and Sai) out when all of its members were in town.

When he comes home poisoned, badly, _badly_ , poisoned, you break down. It is serious enough that Tsunade allowed you to assist her as she worked to remove the poison and heal its damage—and Tsunade doesn't allow lovers to work on lovers in high risk situations. You try your best to not be conflicted or paralyzed as you help the Hokage with her work, to try to prove your worth as you try to save him.

And save him you do, and Tsunade even acknowledges she couldn't have done it without you. Tsunade does not give idle praise. This means her words are a confidence booster to you as well as shocking—if you'd been unable to help her, she would have been unable to put Kakashi on the fast road to a full recovery.

As you shiver with repressed tears over your husband's sleeping form, Tsunade's hand lands gently on the middle of your back. Her healing hands cannot heal your fear of losing him—a fear you'll always have probably—but they do comfort you.

"I will see about getting him a Genin team to teach. Being a Jounin-sensei takes precedence over ANBU missions any day, regardless of if they like it or not over at headquarters. It'll give him time to recover properly and it will keep him around the village for a few months at least."

"Thank you, Tsunade-shishou, but I don't think he'd appreciate that despite the benefits." Your voice is thick with your unshed tears, you don't want him to wake up drenched in the scent of them.

"Nonsense, it's just the thing for him. And besides, he should be around for his kiddoes. Have you told him yet?" That's when you realize she's shot exploratory chakra through your system and found out the new addition to the family. Sneaky witch of a surrogate mother. You shake your head, not facing her and stroking Kakashi's hand. You're glad she hasn't decided to lecture you about the dangers of healing while pregnant, because you're in no mood to hear it.

"I was planning on telling him when he got home from this mission. Now I'm just glad he came home at all." There is no cliché "planning on telling me what?" from Kakashi, because he is well and thoroughly unconscious. You hiccup— _hiccup_ —at the sight of him. You most certainly did not just sob. Not. At. All.

"Well, he'll still be gone a lot, but Genin are far less deadly than Ame nukenin—usually. I hear your team ran him ragged or was that just you?" You try to swat her hand away from you and, as usual, don't succeed.

"You're worse than Ero-Sennin sometimes Shishou! And besides it wasn't like that!"

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You and Akihito had never fought over anything in your lives before Naruto's daughter Hitomi came into the picture. Never mind the squabbles over the last piece of Mother's famous strawberry tarts, nor the fancy fake senbon that one of your father's friends had given you as children, and certainly not the rivalry which had developed between you in the last few years, that...that didn't really qualify as fighting-compared to _this_. You challenged your brother to a match of wits at first, when you had caught him romancing Hitomi in the garden behind your family home. If romancing counted as playing shogi with her. But it doesn't matter now, because you have to beat him, because she is watching and giggling over any errors either of you make in strategy.

 

It really was no fair that her Jounin sensei had been Shikamaru, who was famed across the five countries as the best strategist in living memory. But it doesn't matter to you now as you ignore the birds singing and Mother's flowers swaying in the breezes of early summer, or the burbling of Father's water garden. Your patio is one of the most envied views in all Konoha because of your parents. But like you said, it doesn't matter right now. You are very distracted by Hitomi's long black hair, as straight as Hinata-sensei's, as it floats on the wind making visible the invisible.

You're very lucky that your older brother is just as engrossed with such poetic things as the Uzumaki girl's hair, otherwise he would have seen your misplaced piece earlier. His dark eyes flicker between three places: Hitomi, you, and the board. He spends the least amount of time on you, which is quite insulting. Hitomi must see, with her clear, bright blue eyes, the violence with which the two of you are playing, but she seems to be halfway engaged with watching the hummingbirds your mother has coaxed into living in the garden. You will have time to appreciate such simple pleasures once you have proved your sure merit over your brother through this game of shogi, you just have to finish it!

Your father wanders into the garden, nose in his book, mask up-no masks in the house, and by mere technicality the garden is not the house-and takes one sniff of the air, so to speak, and turns right back around to go into the house. He never has liked to have to mediate too much between his children, preferring to leave that up to Mother and her super-strength. Akihito said once, when he was fifteen and you were fourteen, that in a civilian village Mother would have been charged as abusing her children after he'd had his head knocked against a wall seven times for seven swear words. You had countered quietly that she actually went lighter on her children than Lee and Ten Ten or Ino and Shikamaru went on theirs. Akihito had shut up after that. Because you were right, and he was a Jounin after all, he should be able to stand a little abuse.

* * *

Weeks after the disaster that was the shogi game, you are in love with Hitomi more than you could possibly say-unlike your brother who has been declaring his love from the top of the Hokage monument for the past hour. When you and your brother reached a complete standstill in the game, Hitomi had smiled a tiny bit, her blue eyes focused completely on the board now and not on either of you. And then she had undone both of your moves until she reached the point where strategy had still been mostly focused on, and then she played against herself until your side won-something you would have used against your brother had she not pointed out she wanted to play from the losing side just to see if a win were possible.

Traumatic.

* * *

 

It turns out that neither of you get the chance to ask Hitomi out, she gets tired of waiting around and takes matters into her own hands. You are the lucky guy who starts to take her to lunch, but you begin to realize your _lack_ of luck soon into the relationship. Hitomi is blissfully happy with you, and you are blissfully happy with her—but you are _not_ blissfully happy that that Nanadaime has an entire ANBU squad deployed to watch over his little girl. And this is on top of the fact that every time you drop Hitomi off at the Hokage Tower, you feel distinctly watched by something unseen—Hinata-sensei must be watching your conduct with her Byakugan or something.

And then there's Hitomi's younger brother Aito, a teammate of your brother Takeo, who goes with his sister everywhere in public. He's like a guard, an acknowledged one where the ANBU squad is not, and his hard blue eyes freak you out more than Hinata-sensei's pale lavender ones. And he never says a word to you, barely acknowledging your presence.

With this assault on your confidence weighing heavily on your mind, you treat Hitomi like a porcelain doll, barely but securely touching her—not too hard lest she break (or Aito comes out of nowhere and shanks you), and not too lightly lest she fall out of your safe care (in which case you're sure the Nanadaime has ordered the squad to quickly and quietly end your life). Your mom softly asks you during dinner one night if you are having problems with paranoia, as you list the things you are worried about, from possible assassination to interrogation and torture. Your father's eyes flick up to you for a moment from his teriyaki, but are refocused on his meal so quickly you can't be sure he was measuring you with that gaze. Was he? No, he couldn't have been…but…he might have. Your mother is still looking askance at you.

Paranoia problems? Where could this be coming from? You don't have paranoia problems, you're just a little worried that if things don't work out with Hitomi for any reason that you might not come out of everything alright. Might end up with your name on the cenotaph. That's not paranoia, that's healthy worry.

"Masato, Naruto isn't going to kill you if you and Hitomi-chan aren't the ones for each other right now. And Aito-kun isn't going to attack you for going out with his sister." Your mother's eyes are clear and bright with conviction of the truth of her words. You shake your head at her.

"Mom, I attack guys who want to go out with Takara, and I'm pretty sure that if someone really broke her heart that Dad would do away with the guy pretty quickly. And we're like the most laid-back family in the village." At least relationship-wise. Out of the nine of you, one has been Hokage (Father), another runs the hospital (Mom), three of you are actively in ANBU (Akihito, Takeo, and yourself), your sisters are both medic-nin (Takara works in her own Jounin ward, as well as helping out sometimes in the black ops ward, and Hoshimi runs one of the Chuunin wards), and your two younger brothers are both accomplished as Jounin and Chuunin, respectively. Most ninja families have at least a few members who elect to not pursue the profession, but your family's contribution to the village's fighting force has been 100%.

Your mother scowls at your assessment of how her family members would react to such an event, and your father sighs and picks up his teriyaki bowl, pushing himself a little away from the low table. Everyone else at the table is just a little too slow to react as Mom pounds her fist on the tabletop. Your father is the only one left with his dinner still in his bowl, and even he looks like he's lost his appetite.

"Your father would most certainly not do that to a young man of Takara's! What's more, I spoke to Naruto this morning and he has been wondering why you're so distant with him. He used to be like an uncle to you and now you hardly speak to him! Masato, the first thing you're doing tomorrow is going to the Hokage Tower and apologizing to him, and if I have to drag you by your ear, then so be it."

"But what about the—"

"No buts!"

"And the—"

"Masato, listen to your mother." Your father's voice cuts through the escalating yelling match. He has quietly set his bowl back on the table and is carefully extricating himself from his seat. You and Mom gape at him, "Sakura, let him be. You've done all you can for him. Will you come sit with me in the garden?" Mom's jaw works in a worrying manner—she doesn't hit Dad very often anymore, but there is the occasional punch or wrenched arm. She shoots a look at you like it's your fault that the argument is over and gets up away from the table. Your parents leave the room together, your father's arm around Mom's waist, his fingers splayed on her side and back to compel her forward.

Akihito leans over to you across the table and says distinctly "They don't believe you, but I do. And I'm glad _you_ get to deal with it." So much for support from your family. And tomorrow you've got a date with death—oh, sorry, you mean the Nanadaime Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto. It's a date with sudden, instantaneous, horrible, and public death—and then there's Hinata-sensei to contend with after that. You've won the various battles so far to win over Hitomi, but it looks like you're about to lose the war.

Traumatic.


	9. Make Romance Bloom, Just Add Hypothermia / A Brief Word from Genma

You'd thought you would never have to go back to Snow—ever, _ever_ again. But as you sit, exhausted, in a stone cold room deep in the hull of a ship carting you home, you remember you have completed the whole "There and back again," thing which Obito always spoke glowingly of. Somehow you feel like the phrase doesn't mean "go there, come back, and go there again" but at this point it doesn't matter. You've got an unconscious ink user, a chakra depleted (but only for the next nine seconds in all likelihood, he's had more than enough time to recover) Yondaime's son, and a nearly hypothermic medic.

You'd carried Sai on-board three hours ago, and Sakura had carried Naruto. The three of them, Naruto, Sakura, and Sai had been in bad shape—your guide had, halfway through his respectful and tearful goodbyes, pulled a stupid where Team Kakashi was concerned. He'd hidden twenty mercenary shinobi all around the dock as well as on some of the ships, and the tearful goodbyes were the 'go' signal. You hate ambushes, especially when you're about to get to go home to your warm bed in your warm apartment in your warm town in your warm country—far away from the cold beds and cold rooms and cold houses and cold towns of this _particularly_ cold country.

Hell, you're not a brand new kunai yourself after that skirmish. Some bastard had made it his sworn duty to see the face of you, his enemy. And while the guy was no prodigy or demon he was certainly a challenge when trying to look out for the rest of your team. He'd never gotten close to your mask once, not even with a weapon let alone his greedy fingers. No one is going to take your father's honor away—most especially not honorless scum from Snow, not when Sakumo paid such a high price to buy it.

Once you and Sakura had piled twenty one dead bodies up like building blocks on the shoreline, you'd dealt with them in the traditional ANBU manner—a singularly powerful katon jutsu—as Sakura went to identify how Naruto and Sai were fairing.

Naruto just needed sleep, she'd said. Sai, however, had begun to bleed severely internally. The young shinobi would have died under any other medic's hands, you're sure of that right now. Apparently Tsunade placed high emphasis on the ability to heal internal bleeding. You're not surprised, from what little you can remember your father telling you about a certain mythical blond medic.

Speaking of medics, yours has now turned hypothermic, you're sure of it. Sakura's chakra is fluctuating wildly, the one sign you have learned to care about when dealing with hypothermic teammates. It was the earliest and least known sign of a ninja being too cold, and it was quite uncomfortable to deal with. Especially with medics, who could sometimes cause chakra burns on both themselves and the person trying to keep them warm. And the chakra burns acted like burns, they weren't the cool patches usually left by chakra interaction. The cooling of the body as chakra is summoned is usually a beneficial by-product for both the medic and the patient—it calms both of them down. For the patient it also usually included a nice lulling pseudo-temperature, warm and cool at the same time. You totally haven't been healed enough times to know that. Totally.

But in such windy weather as that fight had taken place in, and then the stifling cold of the room the captain had stuffed the four of you in, expending medicinal chakra put Sakura on the fast track to hypothermia. Pakkun told you once that he can hear tiny chirps surrounding and coming from hypothermic shinobi—the tiniest tendrils of chakra hitting resistance, like baby Raikiri, only barely loud enough for even Pakkun's sharp ears to pick up.

"Kakashi, can you hand me that blanket?" She's still shivering, which is a good thing. But of course she would be, she hasn't realized what's taken hold of her yet. You might not have to do what you think you'll have to do if you tell her now, she might still be able to fix herself somehow.

"Sakura, I think you're becoming hypothermic. You should bed down between the boys to warm up." She stares at you blankly, shivering like hell.

"They won't help me get my body temp back up, Kakashi-sensei. I need that blanket, and you need to figure out how to make this room warmer." She says it as though you haven't checked the room yet. There's far too much wood in the place to simply fire off a katon to warm the metal, and there is no fire grating. You hate your life. You really, really do sometimes. First, rays of hope had been rudely thrust upon you in the form of your current team. And then one of those rays of hope had taken on a different kind of hope entirely, and you'd been powerless to stop her from doing so. And now you're faced with the worst nightmare of most shinobi—being attracted to a close teammate, being attracted to the _medic_. And what's worse is that she's a child compared to you. Sakura is somewhere hazy between the end of sixteen and the beginning of seventeen these days, and not only is she half your age (well, not _technically_ , but then again _technically_ **_you're_** sane) but she's dating Rock Lee. You hate it. You hate it because you're thirty this September, and they're both teenagers.

And you totally haven't tried to sabotage their relationship by any means at your disposal. There was just that mysterious fire at the coffee shop, and then there was that completely random theft of all the dango at the best dango shop in town (and Kurenai may or may not have gotten half of it, with the other half going to Anko, that totally didn't happen), and then there was the acid of bug repellent eating holes into all of Lee's best jumpsuits just hours before a big movie-date…It seemed that tragic accidents followed the couple wherever they went. And you? You're innocent. You totally haven't tried to sabotage much of anything at all.

Yet.

You could do something, suggest something, right now, which previously hadn't been all that accessible. Unless she suggests it first, and then it won't be _you_ who sabotaged their relationship. Utterly guilt free break-up, because you'll have only had a tangential relationship to it. And then Rock Lee will stop mistaking the itching powder for the starch, no longer dating Sakura will likely clear the boy's head when he reaches for cleaning supplies.

"Damn. Damn it all," she's running a quick scan of herself and finding out just how ill she really is. "Kakashi get over here, shirt off. Now. And bring another blanket." You barely check the insinuation on the tip of your tongue, she could probably really hurt you with how badly her chakra is fluctuating. She might mean to only pinch but could actually take a chunk of flesh off—or she could mean to fling but only shove, or chillingly vice-versa—and do it all by accident. You don't give her a reason to hit you with whatever strength she's got at the moment, instead doing what she asks as efficiently as possible.

She's peeled away her jacket and her Jounin vest and stripped down to her shorts. She is about to yank off her undershirt when you reach out to stop her, guilt tearing at your insides suddenly—doesn't she remember she's dating one the most emotionally unstable shinobi in her generation? Doesn't she know that Naruto will be the first to wake up and be the first to blab about how you had to save her life by skin-to-skin contact? Doesn't she know that the first person Naruto talks to when he comes back to the village, without fail, is Bushy Brows? By the look in her eyes she knows and she doesn't care at this point. You pray her chakra is at a low ebb as you prepare for her to hit you—

"Kakashi, you can be mature about this or you can have a dead medic and one Godaime Hokage who will be in the most major _tiff_ of her life when you get home."

_Well, when you put it that way, Sakura-chan…_

You expertly wrap the blankets around yourself and your teammate, just because you were reluctant to do this for _Sakura_ doesn't mean you haven't saved a man's life this way before. You meditate on and visualize the worst things imaginable for the next few hours as Sakura talks to you to keep herself awake. She's wrapped around you, and it feels like she's _supposed_ to be wrapped around you, like that's her purpose in life. Because of the very unwelcome thoughts about your respected colleague because of that train of thought, you are left only with trying to recall your most dreadful D-rank missions as a young child. You try to conjure the scents of Obito's attempt at vegetable tempura (it was so foul that you've not been able to stomach tempura of any kind since that day, that _awful_ day). Anything to take your mind off of Sakura's skin and how it's gotten warmer under your hands during the time the two of you have been wrapped up together.

Naruto woke up hours ago, and immediately understood the situation. He'd obtained a brazier filled with glowing coals and set it up near the two of you, closer to Sakura than yourself. You don't ask where he got it, but decide that he _politely_ borrowed the brazier from someone. Just like you have _polite_ talks with boys who go after Sakura. You just don't want her to get hurt by idiot teenage boys, that's all. It's just some sort of fatherly instinct, yes—not jealousy, never jealousy. Totally.

Lee had been an ambush, a sleeper cell living inside _of_ and safely _under_ your surveillance. The young man had never been considered a threat and it was a bitter pill to swallow when he began waiting at the gates for Team Kakashi to come home after missions. You had believed that never in a million years would Sakura go after Lee, sure the kid was stubborn but there were a lot of stubborn people in the village who she could choose from.

You don't count yourself as one of them. You're not one of them, you're totally not one of them. You're just focused, that's all. Not stubborn at all.

Totally.

* * *

 

You decide something as you are squeezed up to Kakashi to fight off the cold (the cold which you are no longer really in danger of, but you don't want to loosen your arms around him—the man throws off heat like the Hokage drinks sake, and it is _very_ nice in this cold cabin).

You are going to break up with Lee as gently and sweetly as possible when you get home. It is just too painful to keep going out with him when really the two of you'd only dated as a way to rationalize each of your curiosity about the opposite sex. Now that each of you are satisfied with what you've found out and learned, your relationship is really kind of…over. And why would you go out with Lee when you could try to get Kakashi-sensei? It will take a bit of sleuthing to back up your theory that he likes you, but it certainly won't be anything you can't handle.

You know where you're going to start too—it's the easiest and probably going to be the most helpful place for your search. The hospital record room. Particularly in the H-A's. And perhaps the past three months' work logs to compare between them.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Shizune left you alone to go find the bride and congratulate her personally. So you're alone, just you and your senbon. It clicks between your teeth rhythmically—molar, canine, second incisor, first, first incisor, second, canine, molar—as you wait for _your_ friend to get done shaking hands and letting others clap him on the back. It's his wedding reception after all, and he'll be sure to come speak to you before the night gets too much older. You've got to admit he looks good, happy as you've rarely seen him. He's even letting people brush against him, which is definitely a first. The senbon flicks molar-canine-molar, finally resting for a moment between them. She's made him this way—tamed him in somehow.

Hatake Kakashi, you felt, was never someone to be domesticated to regular life. His life had been too awful for him to ever do something so civilian as getting married. It had taken you and Raidou years to get him to go drinking with you, and even then you sometimes had to get Gai to go fetch him from whatever dark corner he'd holed up in. When you say 'domesticated,' you mean it in the best sense, of course. Kakashi was far too aloof to get really involved with people, to have a personal reason to protect the village, the things which Konoha shinobi were encouraged to find. He didn't _need_ people, he didn't _need_ them deep within his soul—or at least you'd thought—because that part had been burned away years ago.

But as you watch him glance around the party once in awhile, looking for his new wife, you can't help but feel like he's been reclaimed from whatever ocean he'd been drowning in. He actually jokes with Gai nowadays, something which he hasn't done since before the Uchiha massacre—you've never known what happened, you just noticed they never joked around anymore. The senbon is lifted out of its cradle between your molar and canine, bobbing its way across all of your teeth to settle into the other molar-canine set. He is now sometimes the one who suggests in that docile voice of his that the team grab a round of sake after turning in their mission completion forms. And what's more, he's never more than ten minutes late to those get-togethers. Whatever was wrong with your silver-haired friend all these years, the girl with the pink hair and green eyes is slowly chipping away at it.

That they're getting married seems to be a mere formality, too, because they basically lived like married people before this, the only difference being that they didn't live together up until a few months ago.

* * *

You never made it past the rank of Chuunin, which has been fine with you for many years. Chakra could only take you so far, and you'd always known that, and being eligible for a team-leader position was enough to support your family and send your little girl to the Academy. She'd wanted to become a ninja for all the wrong reasons—she idolized you and your daring missions, and then there was her crush on that Uchiha boy—but eventually she'd become a fine kunoichi. She easily surpassed you at an age where you'd still been a Genin. And her teachers, while flawed sometimes deeply, were prestigious as well. Her original Genin teacher was none other than Hatake Kakashi, the Copy Nin. And then she'd studied exclusively under the Fifth. You couldn't have asked for a better educational lineage, really. Even if the Fifth did (apparently, it's only a rumor, but it's a damned persistent one) drink too much sake, and even if Hatake did read dirty books, they were still enormously powerful and respected shinobi. And they taught your daughter. Both were incredibly important to her, as well.

One of them became a second mother to your daughter, able to get excited for things which Sayoko could only smile hesitantly about—things such as the usefulness of forcing poison into an opponent using chakra (which was damned interesting), but it was something which your wife could never understand. The Fifth not only understood why Sakura was excited, she was often the one who'd taught it to her.

The other, well, the other had become _involved_ with your daughter. And as you stand next to Sayoko in the Hokage's office, you can't help but feel they became involved in the worst of ways—they are _lovers_ and they are getting _married_ right in front of you and you can't do anything about it. Both your daughter and the Copy Nin are accomplished Jounin, and you've heard rumors of Kakashi's exploits in the ANBU. You literally can't do anything, because how could the ability of a Chuunin stand up against two Jounin?

You remember that hectic year when she turned eighteen. Your first clue had been the night of Halloween in the bathroom, covered in a layer of silver sparkles a millimeter thick. Your second had been the abused little light brown eyeliner pencil, smudged with silver fingerprints. The third had been your wife giggling as she took a picture of your now silver-haired daughter dressed up in a baggy Jounin uniform. Okay, you'd thought at the time, this is a lark, dressing up like that damned Jounin hentai.

She'd come back from that party triumphant, and you had assumed she'd won the costume contest or something. You'd even congratulated her on her accurate reproduction of the awful reading material the Copy Nin carried with him always. She'd giggled in that scary way which Sayoko used to, and gone up to her room.

For the rest of November she'd grown steadily more moody however, having crying fests with her mother regularly—you wisely retreated upstairs to review your latest mission report. No sense being subjected to silly girly stuff when you had actual work you could do. You hadn't known who she was after (although really you had, you just refused to admit it), so it was a surprise when in the first week of December you heard that your meek little daughter had beaten the living crap out of the Copy Nin during a sparring match. People rarely landed a hit on Hatake Kakashi most days, so for him to be hospitalized because of your precious little Sakura? Absurd!

Of course, your precious little Sakura _was_ also a determined and short-tempered little Sakura. You could easily see that your daughter could lose her head during a spar—she'd shattered your ankle the year before, you'd been taunting her about not giving her all because you were her father. The lesson had been for her own good—what if, gods forbid, you decided to leave the village, become a nukenin? What would she do then, if she were to ever encounter you on the road? She was under oath to bring nukenin to justice, just as you were. For your concern over her ability to push aside her emotions, your adorable little daughter had brutalized you almost beyond recognition.

But the fact remained that as soon as he got out of the hospital after nine days, the first thing Hatake did was take your daughter out for dinner.

And then they'd become inseparable—she'd gotten her own apartment the following May, moving out of the family home completely, and you'd begun doing a basic chakra check before going over to her place to drop off anything or to talk to her. Hatake was at the place a worrying amount of the time, but they never actually said anything to you, never confirmed that they were together. You'd tried to let it go, you really had. Relationship stigmas were something confined to the civilian population, but you yourself had married a civilian, she must have been rubbing off on you. Never mind the fact that she thought the two of them were adorable in every way which you did _not_.

When you came back injured from a mission, the medic had informed you that your daughter wouldn't be able to visit you right away, she was busy.

"How can my one and only daughter be so busy she can't even peck her old dad on the cheek, grateful that I've again returned alive?" The medic had looked around himself suspiciously, as though someone could be listening in.

"The Hokage found out about Sakura-san and Hatake-san's relationship, and protested vehemently. I heard she tried to skin him alive," you privately cheered at the thought, the pain of your wounds fading for a moment, "but the receptionist says that the Hokage just suggested they have a 'friendly,' spar, and that Godaime-sama took things a little too far. Your daughter dragged Hatake-san in by his collar about twenty minutes before you arrived. She's been patching him up and yelling at him since then." It was at this point in your conversation that you had started yelling at your medic, telling him to keep that damned Jounin hentai away from your daughter among other things, causing him to sedate you forcibly (with chakra and a carefully applied knock on the head) and strap you to your hospital bed.

* * *

 

As Kakashi makes his way over to you, you can tell he's grinning underneath his mask. You preserve your friend's honor by deciding that the sparkle in his eye isn't tears but just a bit of extra shine of happiness on his wedding day. The two of you give each other half hugs, arms thumping on backs, the works. You grab his shoulders and hold him away from you for inspection. The senbon bobs approval as a hint of a smile tugs at your lips. He's been stuffed into civilian clothes, for the most part, save for his Jounin vest, and a black mask still obscures his face. You expected nothing less of your friend—sure that girl Sakura could change a lot in Kakashi, but some things were core to his being at this point.

"I dunno how you convinced ol' Keisuke to let you get married to that firecracker, Kakashi, but I'm glad you did. You haven't looked this pleased with yourself since you assassinated that bastard in Ame." He gives you what a Jounin would deem an exaggerated sniffle at your antics. Barely audible, and concealed with a shift in posture, the sound of clothing rustling enough to cover up the other noise.

"Don't go dredging up all of those pleasant memories, I'll lose my cool and cry. And then my darling wife will see me bawling my eyes out—and then she'll beat you within an inch of your life," he drawls, drawing out a short chuckle from you before you let him go. His shoulder raises up just a bit in a half-shrug as he looks away to see Keisuke glowering at the two of you from across the room. You grin at the Chuunin and nonchalantly wave, making the movement as sarcastic as possible. Kakashi perks up immediately, gaining two inches of height as he stands a little straighter, waving as well. Without turning his head towards you, he speaks.

"I didn't convince Keisuke, I merely informed him that I was getting married to his daughter. He can't run her life at this point, and I simply made him aware of that fact. After he chewed on that for a few moments, he agreed. Perhaps not wholeheartedly, but he didn't outright attack me at dinner that night." With that little gem, your friend sets off across the room, weaving through the crowd with the ease of long practice. Your senbon clicks molar-canine-second incisor-first-first-second-canine-molar as you see Keisuke pale when Kakashi comes right up to him, arms outstretched. You wish you knew what was being said, but it will just have to be a mystery for eternity. Now where _is_ Shizune?

* * *

"You will believe I will treat your daughter right, Haruno Keisuke, or I will be forced to be as annoyingly and as endearingly affectionate towards my in-laws as I can stand. I can guarantee that what _I_ can stand is a great deal more than what _you_ can stand. I don't ask that you like me, I don't ask that you speak of me glowingly to others. I do ask, however, that you believe that I will put your daughter before even the village if it were to come down to it. If you still cannot believe me, then I promise you I shall harass you within an inch of your life, publically and privately, until you do."

You let your wife's father go from the bear hug you engulfed him in. His mortification at the thought of _you_ being endearing mollifies you enough to go search out Sakura and her spring flower-infested hair.

You don't think about Haruno Keisuke for the rest of the evening.


	10. The Great Icha Icha Heist / More Stubborn that Rock Lee

Being the youngest of seven, you and Minoru are quite close. Sure, he's a little high strung, trying to surpass his older siblings and failing to see his own strengths compared to theirs, but you can get along with him pretty easily. The two of you are often mistaken for twins by civilians—you're obviously both Hatake (Dad's genes won out even against the infamous Haruno genes for pink hair, including in yourself. _So_ not fair), each sharing a coloring and style which is well-known even by non-shinobi in Konoha, and most everyone in the village knows that the Hatakes have a set of twins. You ran a con for most of one summer Genjutsu camp that you _were_ twins. It was an international camp held in Suna, the closest of Konoha's allies, and it was the only camp which your Dad could even remotely rationalize to your Mom—they were both expertly adept in Genjutsu, but they were horrible at teaching it.

And by horrible it was to be understood that Fumihiko's mom Kurenai covered her children's ears when she heard either of your parents trying to articulate their research developments in the field. She was far too relaxed to tell them that they did more harm than good when they said things such as "hand signs were beginning to become irrelevant to the activation of the thing, and that if you knew how the things went together then you'd do fine and it would turn out kind of alright most of the time. But you'd better hope that you get the other stuff right, otherwise things got weird when that one step failed because you forgot to activate the other one." So you and Minoru, along with most of your other siblings, studied under a Genjutsu master at one time or another—because your parents were hopeless at trying to teach it to you properly.

You and Minoru had been sent to that one camp in Suna, and since you'd been the only kids from Konoha, you'd had a grand time telling tall-tales of your brilliant escapades through the Leaf village. Neither of you knew, at the time being only five and six years old, that one of your most well-received stories would actually come true all by itself.

* * *

You're twelve and he's eleven the year of Mom and Dad's twentieth wedding anniversary. It's their first anniversary since Dad retired from A and B-rank mission considerations—he is going to be fifty four this September, and he looks tired. He's spent forty eight years as an active Konoha shinobi, and isn't planning on fully retiring until he reaches the compulsory retirement age of sixty five. No Konoha shinobi besides Sarutobi had ever reached that legal marker—you're of the opinion that no other shinobi has ever reached that age as an active nin.

So with all of that in mind, you and Minoru reached an agreement—No Icha Icha for Dad on September 20th, regardless of personal risk involved for either of you. Mom puts up with him reading it, it seems, and nothing more—she's put up with it for twenty _eight_ years running (having known Dad for those eight extra years, surely she put up with his books…surely those books are that old…surely), she's put up with it infecting her children (Akihito is the worst, but Masato and Takeo have their own minor collections), but she shouldn't have to put up with it on her anniversary.

Which is why you and your brother are running for your lives at the moment—Dad had calmly looked around the house for fifteen minutes for his current book, and then just as calmly he'd called his summons to scent out the book's location. When he'd bitten his thumb and gone for the floor, you both had suddenly needed to be outside in the garden. Once you were out of sight of the living room windows, you had both bolted. You know that Dad knows who took his book, but he isn't going to demand it back from you—he's just going to get his book back without even missing a beat. Mom probably won't ever know he's dispatched ninken after his two youngest children, she'll just be happy he hasn't got his nose stuck in a book on this day. Which is really why, you think to yourself as you sprint along the rooftops of your city, you're on this nearly suicidal mission. The baying of Dad's pack dulls a little—they've probably separated to track both you and Minoru—and you put a little extra kick to your strides like Tsunade-baa-chan and Mom taught you. Get some distance, then settle in for the long-haul with a chakra-enhanced lope—it makes already large strides huge, difficult leaps and bounds become stepping stones, something like that. You're not good at it yet, but you can do it, and practice makes perfect.

Now, if you can just avoid Bull things will probably be okay. If you can just get to the checkpoint your brother should be waiting at, things will be fine. It's so not fair that Dad summoned the entire pack—you'd only been expecting Pakkun, the best tracker.

* * *

It took Dad's dogs thirty seven minutes and forty three seconds to bring the two of you back home to the backdoor of the house (Pakkun told you, his grizzled little face scrunched up adorably, the traitor). Dad appears from inside, dressed in comfortable civilian clothes, and gently pries the two of you away from his ninken. The dogs are aging, which is why it took nearly twenty minutes for them to catch you and your brother, the rest of the time being eaten up in the travel back to the house. Takara and Takeo tell stories of being brought back moments after Dad's summons had been sent out. Once you are both dropped on the porch, his right hand comes out, palm up. _The book, please._ You and Minoru stare unflinchingly up at Dad, neither of you producing his book. He sighs and sits back on his heels, one hand resting on his knee, the other still extended out to the two of you.

"Hoshimi-chan, Minoru-kun, you will give me that book back so that I can find my place in it and put a bookmark there." His mask is up, as are yours and Minoru's, since the three of you are outside. You continue to stare up at him while your brother begins to fidget. "You think that I'll ignore your mother in favor of that book today, don't you?" you fight the urge to fidget too, under his calm gaze. "Well, you both should know, that with the evidence of having a family of _nine_ , everything points to the fact that I much prefer your mother's company to that book's. So give it here, and then get cleaned up, Bull's slobbered all over both of you." For a beat there is silence. And then, with a tiny glance at you, Minoru digs out the book and hands it to Dad, wincing at the betrayed look you give him. You'd discussed this earlier—if caught, present a united front, never give in and never give up.

Dad takes the book with a happy crinkle of his eye, straightening up from his crouch. "Well, it was the thought that counted, kids. I do appreciate you trying to do this for your mother, although you really could have asked me if I was planning on foregoing my books today. _Now_ , your mother and I need to have some quality time," at this he gives you both a long, uncomfortable, measuring look, communicating exactly what he means by _quality time_. "So when you're done cleaning up, you should both head over to…I think training ground twenty three where your siblings are. Just do the usual thing, look for the biggest explosions." You twitch at the mention of explosions, the topic being a sensitive one for you. You and Akihito have a rivalry going on between you on who makes the better explosive tags—so far Akihito, the jerk face genius, is winning. It's so not fair that he's seven years older than you. So not fair.

Just before going into the house your dad pauses, looking over his shoulder with a visible smile—Mom's rule is that if one _toe_ is inside the house, the mask is _down_. Dad has half a toe inside, but he doesn't risk things too much when Mom is likely to be highly emotional. The lines on his face appear with that smile, where otherwise he looks years younger, that smile shows his actual age. You sit sullenly on the ground as Minoru tugs at your arm to get you to stand, which you very kindly refuse by way of jabbing your fist at the back of his knee. He crumples involuntarily to land in a flabbergasted prone at your side.

"I gave Masato money to take all of you out for barbeque after you wear yourselves out, and Takara said she would take anyone who wanted to go out for a movie. Even if you don't take her up on her offer, not a one of you, not Akihito right on down to you, Minoru, are to step foot inside this house before the hour of seven, am I clear? Your mother and I will be out this evening, so you're on your own for dinner. Now, go," Dad says with a shooing motion while Pakkun and the rest of the ninken pack dismiss themselves.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You wake up a half hour before true sunup. Your shifts at the hospital typically start at around six, an hour after the sun has climbed over the horizon. So you're up a bit early for your normal routine, but not out of the ordinary. Your profession dictates that an internal clock must be stronger than a digital one, so you often will wake up before your actual alarm. Your boyfriend subscribes to the same ideology, just in the opposite direction. He's often well aware of what time it is, he just refuses to enslave himself to clocks any more than he has to.

Speaking of said boyfriend, it's good you _don't_ have work today because he's currently wrapped around you in any way he can manage while still asleep. And that last part isn't too certain. Regardless of his level of consciousness, it would still be hard to extricate yourself from his arms without waking him up. And then he'd whine and cajole you back into bed (he's made you late for enough breaks that you know he'd have no qualms making you late for work altogether), and wrap himself around you again. So it's good you don't have work, now you don't have to go through that entire pointless scenario.

Of course you don't actually _know_ that he would do that, as this is the clichéd Morning After, but given his actions in other places at other times, it can be assumed that he wouldn't let you go. He is unrelenting in _what_ he wants when he decides he can _have_ what he wants—yesterday evening is the latest example to be added to a long list. He'd been shooting you down for at least a month, which of course only made you try harder to get him to sleep with you. But last night he'd finally realized that no thunderbolt would strike him dead if he made love to his girlfriend. _Finally_. After dating for seven months (you wonder if he's spoken to Shishou yet, like you told him to…for the sake of his health you hope he has), he's slept with you, late to the decision as usual. You'd decided you wanted to sleep with him a month ago.

You've also decided that you are going to marry this man one day. He is just so heartbreakingly perfect for you, just jaded enough (unlike Naruto and Lee) that he's realistic about things, and just hopeful enough to sometimes believe in the impossible. He knows what makes you sad and what makes you laugh as well, and how to get you from frowning to smiling in half a minute flats. And he can actually cook, where you're stuck with tentatively following instructions word-for-word, desperately praying that things turn out edible.

The sun is streaking the sky pink and yellow in the east, coloring the sky with greens and purples where you can see it from your window. Kakashi's hair (what little of it you can see) glows in the predawn light, ethereal and silver, and you tug your arm out of his hold to gently run your fingers through it to sooth yourself that he's really here. Yes it might wake him up, but he'd be awake soon anyway, this is when he normally gets up to go through his kata. Today his routine will be different, you're sure of it.

One of his arms is tucked underneath your head as a living pillow, his elbow bent so his fingers can knot themselves in your hair. The other arm is wrapped securely around your waist while his legs tangle together with yours. His face is pressed into your hair, his breathing forcing warm air onto your scalp. Being so wrapped up might have freaked you out except you know he did this while he was asleep, and that if you break free of him, he'll just drag you back down to bed so he can hold you like this while he's awake.

* * *

The two of you were going through a round of strictly taijutsu routines when Kakashi had purposely missed a guard-point and let you hit him. That hit had opened you up to a sweeper from him which took your legs out from under you. It had happened in such a blink of an eye that you'd barely known what happened until your head hit the grass and he had trapped you there. He might not be in his late teens anymore, but he is most certainly still at peak condition. You'd be angry at him missing that guard-point if it had been for nothing, but you know it _wasn't_ for nothing.

You are like Tsunade, your super strength is best for long-range attacks. It's also good for up close and personal hand-to-hand because it's intimidating. No one usually wants to take a sock on the jaw from a Fire Style Winding Right, let alone from _you_ who can hit harder than Kakashi. But you rely on that intimidation too much apparently, which is why Kakashi let you hit him. Opponents let one another get a hit in to make an opening, it's all basic Academy stuff. The reason it's in the Academy curriculum is because it's something every shinobi will encounter, regardless of their rank. If an opponent were to purposely take a hit and remain conscious, a serious weak spot would be exposed to them. You would literally not be able to block whatever potshot their concussion let them take at you.

Neither of you discuss the lesson learned, however. He's too busy being fascinated with your hair, and you're content just to lay on the ground and enjoy the attention. Kakashi loves you hair more than even you do, so you let him do what he wants with it. He is the reason you grew it out again, after all.

A few months ago you'd been poisoned by an opponent during a short A-ranked mission, and you'd been taken off active duty for six weeks so the poison could be fully extracted—you'd never seen Ino so pale, as she sat at your bedside when you woke, but Ino had looked as tanned as Iruka-sensei compared to Kakashi. Once you were out of the hospital after a few days, you were still basically bedridden. Luckily you had Kakashi to cart you around for the most part, and during that entire time you'd been more focused on getting well than on your hair. Kin's lesson, while nearly seven years old, still affected you deeply. Your hair had, as is typical with hair, grown out two inches past the longest you normally would let it get.

You wouldn't have noticed the shabby length of your hair except that Kakashi had gently suggested, as he made you dinner at his apartment, that you begin to braid it to keep it out of the way during missions. You'd been a little dismissive in your response.

"Oh, I'll just get it trimmed down at the barber shop, or have Ino touch it up," to which Kakashi's shoulders had fallen slightly lower into his slouch. If you'd been looking anywhere but him you would have missed the cue, too. You have to give the man credit, he picks his battles and your hair is apparently one he leaves to you despite his preferences.

"Or, you know," you toyed with the ends of your bangs, inspecting them for split ends, "I haven't grown it out in such a long time, maybe I should start braiding it. See if I'm good enough to handle having long hair again." Through the pink strands in front of your eyes you observed your boyfriend's reaction. The sagging shoulders perked up the slightest bit, not enough for even him to notice probably. But you were watching his reaction closely.

"Of course, with Ino being gone so much, I won't have anyone to help me put it up…"

"Don't worry, Sakura, I'll be glad to help you," he turned a bit and smiled broadly beneath his mask, "of course you're going to need to teach me _how_ to."

* * *

 

Kakashi playing with your hair after your spar had quickly turned to something more serious, which you'd suggested to him be removed to a different location. At your apartment he'd finally given in to you, and making love with him had been as amazing as you had thought it would be. The rhythm had been awkward at first, but then the two of you had perfected it on a second and third go around later into the night, a natural frequency which had to be unique to the two of you, and he was such a romantic man when he wanted to be.

It was just a shame this all couldn't have started sooner, but then again if you wanted someone _less_ stubborn you'd still be dating Rock Lee. That's right. You just went there. Kakashi is more stubborn than Rock Lee, the genius of effort. It had taken about two and a half straight weeks to convince Lee to sleep with you when you'd been dating at sixteen. Lee had been reluctant even after you'd begun sleeping together. Surely, you'd thought a month ago, a man who _wanted_ that sort of intimacy would be more willing to go for it than a man who didn't really factor sex into any relationship. But, you decide, the wait had made it worth it—even if it was just Kakashi stalling and feeling awful about himself. It ended up taking more than a month to convince Kakashi, who daily professed his feelings by the quiet and thoughtful things he _did_ with his quiet and very intentional actions.

Kakashi interrupts your morning thoughts as he mumbles incoherently into your hair, sounding absolutely pleased with the world. You mentally correct your conclusion: the things he does, without even realizing it.


	11. You're Only Badass if Your Hair is Pink / Hatake Sakura - Name Robber

Your parents named you Takeo. It means 'warrior.' And you had the misfortune to inherit your mother's hair and eyes rather than your father's. If your mother were Yamanaka Ino or Uzumaki Hinata, or even Moegi, the wife of Hyuuga Neji, that would have been fine. But your mother is Hatake Sakura, who has _very_ pink hair. Sometimes you wish you'd been born a girl. Your older twin sister, Takara, is almost your female doppelganger, and you'd look good as a girl. She has a long sweep of brilliant pink hair, and striking black eyes which shine out of her face. You wear your hair to your shoulders—luckily it doesn't get spiky like your mom's does when it's short—in a flat style. It doesn't accent your brilliant green eyes. The only thing you have going for you looks-wise is the luck that you inherited your father's jaw-line.

But this doesn't bother you most days. Because you don't look like your older brothers Akihito or Masato, or your younger brother Minoru, you are a bit unique in your family. Out of your nine-member clan, there are only four people with pink hair. Mom, Takara, you, and your other brother Riichirou. A slight minority, but a minority nonetheless.

And none of you wear your hair the same, really. Mom has hair almost down to her knees—something that delights your father apparently—which is a point of pride for her. She allows herself long hair because she is confident that no one is going to get close enough to her to use it against her. She makes your father braid it before either of them go on a mission. Why your father knows how to do so many intricate braids is beyond you, and you have never worked up the courage to ask where he learned. Married shinobi are a little more quirky than their single counterparts, which is why you never really question. Your parents have always stood far out and above on the weirdness scale. Not even the Rocks are weirder than your parents, which is saying something because Rock Lee seems to have convinced his son Hatori to constantly wear green spandex.

Takara has hair down to the middle of her back, but doesn't share your mom's ideology about it. She just likes long hair and hasn't had a reason to cut it short. She and Mom don't talk about it, because the last time they did, your father's beloved garden had to be entirely replanted from the resulting fight.

You tie your hair back at the nape of your neck when you go on missions, because you're not nearly so confident as your mother or as prideful as your sister. You count yourself as doubly blessed that your hair doesn't grow at a continuously funky angle like your father's. With your pale rose pink hair it would look like you took special care to make it stand up like that.

And also, then you'd look like Riichirou. Riichirou never had to go through the trouble of "coming out" to the family, because everyone had always known. When Hoshimi, the second youngest, was doodling "Mrs. Yuhi," on her Academy homework, Riichirou was mooning over the same boy. Your brother being gay doesn't bother you—he's your brother, you love him, he'll never be in competition with you over a girl, you're done with it. The fact that ever since he was twelve or thirteen he's spent more time in the bathroom fiddling with his hair than Takara and Hoshimi put together? That bothers you a _lot_.

Riichirou keeps his hair at a length which would have it falling in his eyes most of the time, which would be bad. Except Riichirou puts a freakish amount of styling gel into his hair every day, and the resulting look is always the same. It looks like he has badass pink Hatake hair. And that's what he calls it. Badass Pink Hatake Hair. It emulates the thirty degree angle your father's hair stays at, but it's pink. Thus the name. The way Riichirou carries himself with his elegantly styled pink hair screams to the world at large, "Not only do I make having pink hair badass, pink is a more badass color _because_ it's sprouting out of the top of _my_ head." And the statement is more than halfway true.

Riichirou is much more badass than you could ever hope to be with your own pink hair. His scores at the Academy had him graduating at eight, making Chuunin at eleven, and he's just beginning to start intense training for a promotion to Jounin at eighteen. He's far more deadly in the field than even Akihito, who is the well-rounded genius of the clan. And he's had more boyfriends than you, Masato, and Akihito have had girlfriends combined. Minoru doesn't count because he's a pipsqueak who's only had one girlfriend in his entire life.

It's not fair that you and Riichirou were both born with pink hair and he gets around so much more than you. He even inherited Mom's girly face, which should put him at a disadvantage to you.

Never mind the fact that the last girl who was interested in you drifted away because you were focusing on your promotion to Special Jounin, or the fact that the only girl you'd had a crush on in the last three years was dating your younger brother Minoru…Those were irrelevant in the face of such blatant rejection from the world at large. People wanted your edgy brother; they didn't want you, Takeo, who focus more on protecting the village than playing with your hair.

Okay, maybe it bothered you a little.

It bothers you that you feel you don't have time for girlfriends. There are so many things in life you have to get done, so many missions where you can't be distracted in the slightest, that not only would it be difficult to find a girl, but if you eventually got one you'd never be able to pay attention to her. Both of your parents assure you that you need to pay attention in a relationship—and since they are geniuses (well, your father grew up with that title, your mother earned it through hard work) of their respective generations, you believe them.

You're venting to one of your teammates, Aito, when he dumbfounds you with a suggestion of going after his kid sister Taeko. Well, _kid_ in that she's fourteen and you're almost nineteen. Aito insists that you take her out for lunch or something, at least see if you like her. You almost hope you don't just so that you aren't the first one of your siblings to fall to your mother's family "tradition." Somehow you make the mental jumps required to be okay with the fourteen year gap between your mother and father—because being four years older than a girl is just _wrong_ in your eyes. But Aito, as he usually does, makes you. He won't talk about the black eye he has the next day, but your brother Masato giggles like a six year old when he hears about it.

Taeko surprises you when you hang out, telling you that she's going to be Jounin by the time she's sixteen and that she doesn't have time for boys, that she barely has time for friends. Her short spiky blond hair is falling over her lavender eyes as she lets the statement settle in the air. She's pretty in a way, with her tomboy hair (resembling the Nanadaime much more than Hinata-sama) and her feral grins.

You can only smile and tell her that you don't have time for girls and that you can only afford to make time in your life for people who matter. You add that you are applying for a five-year ANBU enlistment which will make any sort of relationship, friendly or romantic, that much harder. Her blank eyes look up at you across the table and you both silently reach an understanding. In five years _she'll_ be nineteen and in a place in her life where she might have time for someone like you. And you might have time for someone like her. And of course it won't be viciously _wrong_ for the two of you to try being together; nineteen and twenty three are perfectly manageable ages. Again, being the child of your May-December parents, you make the required mental leaps for _their_ age gap.

Later you make sure to thank Aito for introducing the two of you, because now you can point to someone in a crowd when Riichirou crows about this conquest or that. Your eyes can follow someone in a room of people, like your brother's do when Rock Lee's son walks by. However Rock Lee's son is in love with your sister, not your brother.

Maybe Riichirou should go back to Yuhi Fumihiko, who likes deep voiced men like Riichirou (and yourself, but you don't like the young genjutsu specialist thanks very much— _and could he please stop_ stalking _you?_ ). You can probably make Aito set the two of them up.

Just to make sure though…

"Kai!"

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You want to change your surname. You decided this weeks ago, and still people have been pussyfooting around the issue you've raised. Kunoichi in Konoha traditionally don't change their names when they get married—if Tsunade had married her Dan (or even Jiraiya much later in life), she still would have been a Senju. And then there's Yuhi Kurenai who by Konoha law was retroactively married to Sarutobi Asuma but didn't take his name, it's just not something done. Civilian women do it all the time, but female shinobi just don't. But you want to change that, and if you have to physically harm someone you might just have to do that.

 

The reason kunoichi originally didn't change their names was because they wanted their accomplishments to speak of the clan which produced them not of the one they married into. Of course that was also back in the day when a kunoichi traditionally retired at twenty eight to start a family. It was the last stand of the female warriors of Konoha, by leaving their fathers' names behind them rather than their husbands'. But you are confident that your actions will speak of your abilities long after you are gone, and that with such a guaranteed reputation it wouldn't matter if you changed your name to Peaches.

So you want to change your surname to Hatake, because you'd be the end of the Haruno family anyway—your and Kakashi's children would take his family name, as was tradition when shinobi were concerned. When your mother and father settled only on you, they knew you were the end of the line. At least they should have. Your mother, a civilian, thinks it's romantic to take your future-husband's name. It's a civilian fixation, marrying into families and losing previous heritage in favor of the husband's, and almost all civilian women change their surnames when they get married. Your father grumbles that all of your hard-earned achievements are going to be swallowed up by a tainted family name like Hatake. Your father understands the hard work you put into making yourself the kunoichi you are today, but he also doesn't understand that you haven't even reached your zenith yet. When you reach that high point, you'll be Hatake and the whole world will know it.

"I'm sorry, but you'll need to go to a civilian office if you want to change your name, Haruno-san," the clerk tells you. You confused the hell out of him just now, asking where the kunoichi name-change forms could be located and that if you could have one. If he knows what's good for him, he'll find you your damn form and he'll do it right n—

"If you'd excuse me, I believe you can find a general shinobi name change form in the seventh drawer in on shelf eleven of row ninety in the stacks." You start at the calm voice to the clerk's right. It's your old Academy sensei, Umino Iruka, sitting next to the most unhelpful man you've ever met. The clerk in question clears his throat and gets up to go investigate the place Iruka mentioned.

"Ah, Sakura-chan, you're looking well. I apologize, most people don't think of general shinobi forms when they come here," he scratches the back of his head as though he might have done the wrong thing. You smile at your old sensei, seeing he hasn't changed a bit in the last eight years. When your clerk returns from the stacks with a stack of papers, Iruka takes them from him and begins marking them up like an Academy student's essay. The clerk you've been harassing looks pleased to have you foisted on someone else. Tsunade has told you recently that you need to try to adopt a bedside manner in your everyday life, you can't keep pummeling future patients. She chided that you that it's probably because of a medic like you that Kakashi avoids the hospital.

"Here you go. The areas which are highlighted are the ones you need to initial, the circled areas are the ones you need to fill in with your desired name-change, after you're done with it you sign it twice, here and here. Once with your original name and once with the one you've changed it to. If this is because of marriage or a domestic agreement, then you'll need to get the other person's signature here. The second packet is a list of the places you'll need to notify of your name change, as well as forms to send them which will make it official in their records. They have a week to fill out their portion of the form and send it back to this office, addressed to the clerk who processed your initial request," Iruka glances over to his neighbor, seeming to ask if it was okay if he stole a client. The man nods shortly to him without even looking up from whatever he's engrossed himself with. "After that week has passed, you need only come in and sign all of these as proof that each place has been notified. That's just for legal stuff on our end, to keep them honest sort of thing, but the change isn't official until you come in and sign them. I can't issue you new identification tags and papers without the official change. Here you go, Sakura-chan," your old sensei's smile is infectious as he hands over the packets. "I wish you the happiest of marriages."

"Thank you, Iruka-sensei! I will have these filled out in a few hours!"

* * *

"I heard from Gai that you're still hell-bent on changing your name." You pause at Kakashi's words, trying to figure out why Gai would know. The green-clad man hadn't been at the office you'd visited today, and neither had you seen him on your way home. You almost ask, but decide you don't need to know the details that badly, though. You might not _want_ to know the details.

"Yes," you answer softly, coming to sit next to him on the couch. As you curl up with your feet under you, he puts his arm over your shoulders to bring you closer. The silence is a pleasant one, with Kakashi quietly thumbing through his book and you gazing at the inch thick pile of paper which Iruka-sensei gave you.

"Does it bother you that I want to change my name, Kakashi?" The silence changes as he closes his book and sets it on the armrest. He is thinking, you know, so you don't press him. Kakashi is part of a more conservative generation, even if his actions fly in that conservative face most times, and you've never really asked him what he thinks of your idea to change your name. Your generation is the rebellious one, full of young shinobi who test the limits of what can be grudgingly deemed acceptable.

"I would say that it's your name to do with what you will, and that it isn't my place to tell you what to do. But that wouldn't be answering the question. Now, no freaking out, okay?" you nod as you meet his eyes, you asked for this anyway. "I worry for you, what if you lose all of your renown because people place that renown upon Haruno Sakura? I don't want you to feel like your achievements have been taken from you, because I know what that's like and it hurts. After Obito gave me his eye, and especially after that eye kept it's ability, people began to give less credit to my own merit and more to my transplanted eye. I've learned to live with and accept—even appreciate sometimes—what people call me, Sharingan no Kakashi, but the person who I was before has been stolen by the ability of a long-dead clan." He takes your free hand with his, holding it tightly. His eyes are distant as he looks across the room.

"I don't want to be the thing which steals all of your achievements from you. At least…I don't want you to come to think of me like that. People say I bought my eye at a terrible price, but they can't know the full extent of it. I just want you to be happy, Sakura, and if taking my family name is what will make you happy I want that. But I don't want this to turn out to be a temporary satisfaction for you—I don't want you to regret it or pay a too-heavy price for it either."

For a moment you can't think of what to say to him, unable to really break the quiet which settles on you, so you curl up closer to him as you try to sort your thoughts. Kakashi knows this, because he doesn't go for his book as he waits. If he thinks a conversation is done, he goes back to reading, invariably.

"I think I will miss Haruno Sakura, but I won't be all that different as Hatake Sakura. I'm not nearly done improving, and someday people will think of Sharingan no Kakashi's wife and stand in awe of her. I'll give you your point that your name will change what people think of me or remember me by, but I'll be closer to you that way. When they think of you, they'll think of me. And I'll have my own achievements still, they'll just be put in a bit of a different light than before, just like you."

Kakashi's maskless face is very close to yours in a quarter of a second, as he pushes you backwards on the couch. You struggle to get your feet out from under yourself, only to find yourself completely pinned by Kakashi's body. One of his arms stayed around your shoulders, and his free hand smoothes it's way into your hair. The position is mildly uncomfortable—your legs are still folded up underneath you, trapped—but the slight smile on his face makes it worth it.

"Sakura, you are adorable," you stick your tongue out at him in retaliation as he presses his lips to your forehead, "I love you."


	12. Each a Little Miracle / Even Stalkers Have Limits

The thing you envy as you look at Kakashi and Sakura walking through the open air market is the fact that they don't bicker in public. Even easy-going Hinata and Naruto will gently bicker at restaurants. Sakura and Kakashi aren't always in accord, but they never seem to devolve into bickering. Ever since you married Ino, you've turned into your father—in love _with_ and afraid _of_ your wife. You don't even have _kids_ and you argue with Ino. Kakashi and Sakura _do_ , they've got one already and another one on the way. It's just not fair that they don't bicker, because it seems like they have a lot more material to fight about than you do.

They don't even bicker about Sakura's, to use Kakashi's well-chosen words, mutant team. The fact that Kakashi would love nothing more than to personally murder each of the brats doesn't faze Sakura. And it doesn't faze Kakashi that Sakura dotes on the little team of freaks. Maybe it does, but it never shows other than when he drop kicks said mutants when they annoy him.

Sakura's mutant team is one that each and every Jounin breathed a sigh of relief about when they found out that they weren't responsible for the mutants themselves. Hanging around the Academy grounds and watching prospective Genin train, everyone had taken note of the three outcasts who hated one another.

Sarutobi Inoue is a typical clan idiot, her ninjutsu only just functional, her genjutsu barely able to hold together, and her taijutsu can be found most lacking. Of course her taijutsu only started _really_ sucking after a head injury which damaged her balancing abilities. The injury happened after her graduation to Genin, however. She is also blindingly loud. You're very lucky that Ino doesn't take lessons from the kid, otherwise you'd be deaf in a week. You don't see how Sakura _isn't_ , medic-nin training aside.

The Inuzuka boy, Koichi or something inane like that, is notorious for lack of planning. The team would try to work out strategy, and soon find that the kid had rushed headlong into whatever task was at hand. While on farm duty, things wouldn't be that bad—it is the time when he has to go into battle or do something delicate that worries you and your colleagues. Naruto at least has a few "down-boy" or "off" or "shut the fuck up" switches in him. The Inuzuka kid has like…negative off switches.

The last and most mutated of all of them on Team Fifteen is the dead-eyed Yamanaka kid. He's your wife's second cousin or something, and you could really care less what his name is. It's what he _does_ that's worth noting. The Yamanaka deal with information, it's what they do best, and the little monster is one of the best. And he's also a sociopathic compulsive liar who arranges slight misfortunes to occur to his teammates and lies to his elders. Good for _going_ on a diplomatic mission—never tell the truth, never give anything away—but not so good for _coming back_ from a diplomatic mission. Sakura beat the living daylights out of the kid when she caught him lying to her, and you've never seen him do it since. He also doesn't lie to his mother, which gives you the sneaking suspicion that he has received a similar lesson at home concerning the truth.

If Kakashi and Sakura can go through life and not bicker about _that_ team, you don't see how they could ever progress to a full-on _fight_. Ino says that they have indeed had a few fights, and that you're silly for not remembering. The fight that got them together, as well as the fight they had after the Hokage found out. But those are major fights—you're talking about more-than-bickering-less-than-life-altering-spats. Spats. Why don't Kakashi and Sakura have spats?

Your father says you're an idiot when you mention this to him. Of course they have spats—haven't you seen Sakura randomly hitting Kakashi or otherwise brutalizing his person? That's how the two of them have a spat, just like you and Ino whine at each other. You're stunned.

That's when Ino chimes in about the fight they had before they had their first child, and with the disturbing light in Ino's eyes you feel like you'd rather not know.

* * *

You and Kakashi have only been married for a few months when you get pregnant the first time. He'd been dragged home while experiencing extreme chakra depletion, and had had to be on recuperation leave for a month…and well, one thing had led to another, like it normally did when one or the other of you was cooped up at home. On your four month anniversary, he'd been called away for a diplomatic mission, one that would last two months at the least. He'd been gone a week when you found out you were expecting. Those two months had turned into three which had then turned into four, but communication was classified for someone of your clearance level. He comes home to you safe and alive, but is naturally surprised at his non-Sakura-shaped-six-months-pregnant-wife. He's very freaked out, and the two of you have one of your worst fights. He doesn't want kids now, which you counter with the fact that whether he wants them or not, there are going to _be_ kids now.

You eventually go to bed that night crying, Kakashi having left to work off his frustration at one of the Jounin training grounds. Neither of you had thrown anything, but it is good Kakashi left the apartment when he did. Another word and one of you would have accused the other for being at fault—it had gotten to the point that both of you had forgotten that it took two to tango.

He wakes you up a few hours later and apologizes in his own way. He picks you up out of bed—covers and all—and takes you to the living room of the apartment. His knuckles are bleeding sluggishly, his hands a mass of bruises on their sides and his fingers can't boast of better luck. He'd probably run through every kata he knew in rapid and violent succession and as a result his anger, made up of more fear and distress than actual fury, had been spent. After that he'd likely went to the memorial stone and dropped to his knees there for the rest of the time he'd been gone. There are dirt scuffs on each of his knees, easily visible as he sets you on the couch.

For half a moment he simply leans over you, tracing your face with steady hands. The scar on his jaw twitches, a sure sign of his nervousness. You've never _heard_ him swallow in an exaggerated manner, but he _does_ do it. Most people never know, however, because they've never seen the scar.

And then he retracts himself from his towering position and kneels on the floor, eventually settling down to sit on his feet, one bloodied hand on your knee and the other resting on his own. Neither of you speak, you're sleepy and kind of confused—and Kakashi is the one who started it, he's the one who should talk. But he doesn't.

He reaches.

He puts his hands, both of them now, firmly on your hips. His grip subtly adjusts from the one his hands remember to the new one they encounter, and he pulls you forward a little to the edge of the couch. You figure out what he's doing, so you don't jump when he gingerly smoothes his palm over your stomach. You're not the whale of a kunoichi you'll become in a few months, but you are very obviously pregnant. Kakashi doesn't jump either at the weird tautness of your skin. You sit still as he reacquaints himself with your body in a way he probably never imagined doing when he was away on his mission.

When he finally does speak, it's only to apologize and vow to keep you safe, as well as himself, so he can be there for the two of you.

You burst into tears at his words, he'd scared you so badly with his reaction earlier. Babies are supposed to be happy, they're one of the hallmarks of having achieved a balance between civilian and shinobi lifestyles—to have a family to come home to, to be human with, after a mission, that was what heaven was to shinobi. And it was just so scary to think of a chasm forming between you and Kakashi, because he's your _family_ now. He wordlessly gathers you up into his arms and rocks you slowly back and forth until your weeping subsides.

* * *

You like to laugh at how amazed Kakashi looks whenever you tell him you're pregnant, after that first time. With Masato, he scratched his head in wonderment, remarking that it didn't feel like the sucker punch it had been with Akihito. He also mumbled about needing a bigger place, since Akihito was rapidly going to need his own room away from the new baby. When you found out about the twins, he'd joked that maybe you and he should plan things a bit better and that maybe it was time to buy a house.

You didn't even really _tell_ him about Riichirou, because you'd mentioned your pregnancy to him while good-naturedly ribbing him about your family's perfect chakra control abilities. You'd found him later on at home, pacing and muttering distractedly to himself while nimbly avoiding traps set by Akihito, occasionally suggesting improvements for them to the six year old.

By the time you gently told the poor introvert that he was having a sixth child, Hoshimi, he had almost resigned himself to being surrounded by people who utterly depended on him. The fact that she was a girl, and that your husband's protective streak is wider than the Uo desert which stretches off to (nearly) eternity in Suna, sweetened the deal for the poor man. Minoru, therefore, was the only child who was born into a household which completely wanted him, because Kakashi had been so worn down to the routine of babies that there was no room to worry about them. Since Kakashi didn't have anything to be anxious about any longer, he could be fully excited about his youngest.

* * *

The youngest, you remember, was the scariest one. You and Tsunade spoke often about how well the pregnancy was going—you'd remarked that it was almost going _too_ well. The others had had their normal scares, even tragedies. Little Riichirou's twin brother Sakumo hadn't survived birth, which had been heartbreaking for all involved. You still aren't sure if Kakashi has gotten over burying a child who never drew breath, but you comfort him as best you can. He's shinobi, so he understands death which happens without a reason, so you never try to find a reason for him. He's likely found his own reason.

But as this seventh baby approached its due-date, your nerves were on edge. Your mental training screamed that an ambush was about to be sprung in broad daylight, and Kakashi noticed too. His watchful eye probably saved your life, because he suggested a week before you were due to check into the hospital. When you'd begun bleeding during the third night there, he'd been lightning fast collecting Shizune for you.

It was the only birth for which Kakashi refused to leave your side despite your assurances and outright orders to him to leave, and he never winced as you clenched your hand over his wrist. You told him to tune out what the medics were saying, that he wasn't going to understand any of it and that it would just freak him out for no reason. You told him to face you and not the medics, and only bit your tongue and weakly smiled at him through the pain. Something was most definitely wrong, things felt like they were tearing which shouldn't be torn, and the terms which your medics were using weren't comforting at all. When it was all over the familiar squalling of an infant filled the room, and it was the last thing you were conscious for at the time. You passed out almost as soon as you heard your baby's young voice.

You feel kind of bad for the medics who had to try to explain to Kakashi what was going on with you. He was the Hokage after all, and you had just lost consciousness. He _naturally_ had wanted answers. They apparently decided that honesty was the best policy and told him that you'd been losing blood before you'd truly gone into labor, and had continued to do so at an alarming rate for the next several hours.

Apparently when Kakashi was told of this, he'd flipped out, demanding Tsunade's presence immediately and a great many other things. Meanwhile Ino had quietly begun to stabilize you and put a blood regeneration jutsu on you. Kakashi had begun questioning every orderly in the room as to their function there at the time, and, if they weren't doing anything he, according to Ino, " _politely"_ suggested they find something useful to do. Only Ino's words, until Tsunade arrived, apparently made it into Kakashi's head at the time and kept him from murdering anyone.

But Kakashi had refused to sit down and rest until his questions were answered, most especially what had happened to you, his wife, during delivery. Minoru, the name you'd agreed on if you had a boy, had been pulled on a bit too hard by your attending—at least that's all Tsunade had been able to find—and your body had simply not been ready for it. The damage was noticed too late, scarring already beginning to ruin you inside, and Tsunade believed you wouldn't be able to conceive again.

Every other top medic you brought the subject up to agreed with her—Hatake men for several generations having been hard to birth for their mothers as well as the extra damage inflicted during this latest meant that you could still sleep with your husband but there would be no more ensuing children. The news and knowledge are bittersweet. You've grown to love raising your children, being alongside Kakashi teaching them how to hold a kunai or throw a shuriken. The challenge of balancing your schedule to accommodate all the different ages of your children, to still be their mother at the end of the day, you'll miss it. Now they'll only grow older and farther away from you.

You like kids, but this is probably for the best—Kakashi has decided that in a few years Naruto will finally be ready for the title and responsibilities of being Hokage, and then he (Kakashi) will be back on reserve mission rotation. And the Academy certainly wouldn't say 'no' to having Sharingan no Kakashi, Rokudaime Hokage, as one of its teachers.

The best bonus would be that the two of you would be around to enforce one another's rules when Akihito and Masato—and all the others, of course—hit their rebellious stages in a few years.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You had promised Sakura's father with the Nice Guy pose that you would take excellent care of his daughter if he let you date her, bring her flowers every day and love her forever. And then after six months, she'd broken up with you. She said she felt like she'd toyed with your heart, and that she was sorry, could you ever forgive her? It hurt, but your love for her demanded that you forgive her, do everything you could to go back to normalcy. So you'd said you could, you understood her reasons, and that it was best to try to be friends.

Your promise to her father still stood however—you would love her forever, and at the unfortunate distance you'd always known you would, too. At least she doesn't move on immediately, like you had thought she would. It took her almost ten months to move on, in fact, from late January to October—Halloween—to fully move on. From between the concealing fronds of Gai-sensei's large decorative fern, you saw where her affections had gone after she left you. When she first walked into the room, you tried to comfort yourself that at least she wasn't hung up on the Uchiha boy again, and that the rumors she was dating Kiba were truly only that—Rumors. You've followed Sakura around enough to know when she's relaxed or happy, and even though she is playing a part for her costume you can see she's at peace with herself.

At peace with herself and Gai-sensei's Eternal Rival, apparently.

When she discreetly hops over the couch to get into the corner where Kakashi-sensei has comfortably stationed himself in, you begin to tremble. You give it your all to stay still, but you just can't seem to control your own reaction, it's like you're seven again—trying so hard to gain just an ounce of chakra, only to fail miserably. Sakura doesn't notice the fronds shivering not four feet from her—you grudgingly give yourself credit, you _have_ been stalking her for six years, you've become part of her daily routine-sensory-intake. But you _aren't_ part of Kakashi-sensei's daily routine-sensory-intake, he notices you seemingly right off the bat. It's only a flicked glance, his eyelid lowering only a micrometer before his eye is back on Sakura and her ridiculous get-up.

You're aware that a lot of others in the village—read, almost everyone—think that your 'get-up' is ridiculous. But they are not the resident Taijutsu masters of Konoha, most of them couldn't beat a six-year old Academy kid. The green jumpsuit with its breathable stretchy plastic is the best thing for a specialist such as yourself—you can move easily at any speed you're capable of, and nothing tears or wears away. It's not armored because you can usually move faster than most people can throw kunai. It's only against an experienced sparring partner in possession of the Sharingan that an opponent can even remotely predict where to throw sharp things made of injuries.

You wish you'd landed more hits on Kakashi-sensei during your sparring matches while you and Sakura were dating. Kakashi-sensei had offered to spar with you a lot while you and Sakura had been together, allowing you to test yourself against an opponent who could actually keep up with you (sort of, Kakashi could at least _see_ you as you darted around; very rarely did he ever try to match you step-for-step). You dearly wish now that you'd landed more hits on the man. You wish this because you hear Sakura drag an admission of sorts out of Kakashi-sensei—he cares for her deeply, far more deeply than he should, he says. And the last thing she says to him before she leaves is to "go get her."

She'd said it in the teasing voice she'd used when she'd goaded you into actually sparring with her, kissing her, making love to her—the voice that she used when she wanted something and was willing to fight for it. You realize, sitting dejectedly among the green fronds of Gai-sensei's fern, that you miss it when she used that voice with _you_. You've known for months that eventually she would find the person that would make her the most happy, but now that it looks like she's tracked him down and notified him of her intentions…something is trying to close the door on the hope of Sakura ever loving you like you have loved her.

It is only when you sense that Kakashi-sensei might not be breathing that you look up at him through the greenery. His eye is wider than usual, one of his books in one hand—the book Sakura had had for her costume—and his cup of water in the other. The water in his clear cup is shivering as he quakes in his crunched up position. For the first time in probably your entire life you realize that Kakashi-sensei's eye is unfocused and stationary—his eye has been constantly roaming for all the years you've been acquainted with him through Gai-sensei. His eye usually roams around on the pages of his books, or at the sky or birds or occasionally on his opponent during sparring matches, between comrades and enemies on missions. He never just stares, obviously unhinged. Could it be that Sakura's derangement—adorable, but a fact—affects you less than it does the infamous Copy Nin?

The door of hope creaks open a smidgen, glorious heaven-sent luminescence piercing the darkness of your inner turmoil, lighting your life up with the youthful hope of requited love—Where is Gai-sensei whenever you have one of these epiphanies recently?

* * *

 

Sakura has gotten married and had two children by the time you give up. Her oddities did nothing to accidentally drive the Copy Nin away from her, and you felt yourself growing colder, abandoning your youthful vigor and giving into depression. Even Iruka-sensei, wrapped up in his own blissful relationship with Gai-sensei, had noticed your lack of pep. No one could do anything for you, however, because only true love could provide a balm to your heart.

It was too bad that your true love was already happily married to another man. So you mope, unable to strike a Nice Guy pose even for Naruto.

It isn't until Neji kidnaps you to force you on a blind date that your eyes are opened to the girl who has been at your side since you were a Genin. Ten Ten understands you on a level far deeper than most people can even see—you are like two halves of the same person. Where you used to imagine your life as trying to fit into Sakura's, you can clearly see how your life intertwines with Ten Ten's—her life as a weapons specialist has been lived in perfect complement to your life as a taijutsu expert. When you have run out of fists, so to speak, she steps up with an arsenal of horrible looking instruments made of injuries. And when those weapons scrolls have been emptied, you've always been there to take your first stance and beckon your opponent in an open challenge.

Neither of you want to admit it, but as the two of you plan for revenge against your teammate, but you're glad that he went so far as to set the two of you up.

Now, to the hardware store for several dozen rolls of duct tape—not something which Gentle Fist typically works on, according to Naruto's wife Hinata. You are gleeful—like a child—as you skim over the rooftops of Konoha, your hand clutching tightly around Ten Ten's. For a third date, you can't think of anything better than doing something as youthful as pranking a childhood teammate with the help of your girlfriend.


	13. Glorified Babysitting / There MUST Have Been a Better Name!

You really hate being on Hokage-babysitting duty. Compared against marrying one of your cousins, you'd much rather marry your cousin Hinata or Hanabi than babysit the Hokage. But both of the cousins the family would have expected you to marry are now settled down—so you've been robbed of the next most horrible thing compared to babysitting the Hokage. Your other ANBU teammates don't share your belief that you are simply babysitting rather than doing something heroic for the village by protecting the Hokage. You'll let them lie to themselves if they want to.

Because with how much the Hokage escapes from the Tower to rampage around the village, your job can _only_ be classified as babysitting. If Tsunade or Kakashi were still Hokage, this would be expected—routine almost. Kakashi had once escaped three whole squads and had only been dragged back to the Hokage Tower by his irate wife—you'd come within inches of tearing your hair out in frustration as each dazed operative stumbled his or her way back to headquarters, each with little to no knowledge as to where they'd obtained their concussion.

But with how long you've known Naruto, and heard (sometimes painfully loudly) how much he wanted to be Hokage, you'd never expected he'd shirk his work. Naruto wasn't joking as a boy that he would become greater than even the Yondaime Hokage—according to Hiashi-sama, Yondaime paled in comparison to the Nanadaime. So when Naruto escaped, usually three to four times a week, it was damn hard to find him.

Tsunade had escaped, according to Genma (who you replaced when Kakashi took power as Rokudaime), only about twice a week and was easily found when Shizune or Sakura were sent after her. Kakashi had only escaped once a week, and after about a month you discovered that he went to the memorial stone on that day—you were the regular captain of his personal squad and so you'd left him to his own devices if he was at the memorial stone. It was during the long days sitting inside the Hokage Tower, carefully concealed from all but your subordinates on your team, that you decided you job was a glorified babysitting job. You have the Byakugan, and you usually spent the majority of Kakashi's self-appointed days off staring fixedly in the direction of the stone where the Rokudaime stood a silent vigil.

You know that Kakashi had hated the constant ANBU guards which followed him everywhere—almost into his home even. But only almost, because following the Rokudaime into his home was no longer protocol for safety reasons. Safety for the ANBU operatives, not the Hokage. Kakashi's wife Sakura had nearly killed half a squad years ago, a squad composed of newly inducted operatives, when she'd sensed them moving about in her house. The four men on the squad had survived, but the tiny little house that housed the Hatake family was leveled. You had personally apologized to Kakashi and had forced the entire squad to help the civilian contractors hired to build the Rokudaime a new home.

You were damn lucky that Kakashi was once in ANBU and understood how green recruits acted—often overzealously. He was the one who had calmed Sakura's fury at the intruders—she'd thought they were infiltrators or spies or traitors, people sent to assassinate the Rokudaime, and she'd acted accordingly. You had decided, at the time, that an apology to Kakashi was enough—Sakura would probably have killed you and there was nothing "gentle" about her method of murder.

Speaking of gentle—you're at your wit's end these days, and disabling Naruto's chakra network using the gentle fist sounds better every day. He's never in the same place, so finding him takes some doing. At first you had always thought—go to Ichiraku's, truss up one Nanadaime Hokage, sprint back to the Tower before anyone notices said Hokage was missing, and go about your normal life. But life hardly ever proved simple for you, not even when dealing with the resident idiot of the village.

Rarely was he to be found at his favorite ramen stand—and if he was eating ramen, it was usually at a different stand every time. Then perhaps the Korean barbeque place, was your subordinates' usual suggestion—again, rarely. You find yourself longing for the days when you babysat Kakashi who only ever went one place when he went missing from his desk.

When, a year or two ago, you'd found Naruto at the memorial stone three escapes in a row you'd nearly wept with relief—the Nanadaime had finally found his rhythm, his place for escape. But then on the fourth day—not consecutive, of course, just the fourth time in ten days—he was nowhere near the _Shinobi_ memorial stone. Your subordinate Badger had found Naruto at the _civilian_ memorial stone. It is positively maddening.

Your wife playfully suggests one evening that you simply ask the Hokage why he disappears so often, and why he takes the special care to complete his duties of the day before he _does_ escape. You grudgingly take her advice.

Naruto's blue eyes stare at you in wonder, as though you should have seen what he was doing years ago. You don't shift your weight on your feet, instead remaining planted firmly like the excellent ANBU captain that you are. Just because he could pound you six ways from Sunday doesn't mean that he will, he's the legendary Uzumaki Naruto—the most forgiving, understanding, cunning and dull-witted man to ever live. He loves people to death, or their misguided ideals to death if they survive his unrelenting energy and force of will. He'd saved you twenty years ago, now, so there was no reason for him to beat his ideals into you a second time. Surely there was more of a reason to his actions than just seeing the village? There had to be.

"Kakashi-sensei told me to ground myself to the village somehow, when he retired. He told me to find a way to constantly see what I'm working for, what I'm doing here—he said it makes it easier to deal with all the other stuff and stuff." You are thankful that Naruto can't see beneath your mask as you roll your eyes. What was the point of seeing underneath the underneath if what was on the surface was really what was on the surface? The difference between you and Naruto is stark, now, as your genius overthought what he was doing when he was really doing just what it looked like. The Nanadaime just wanted to see and breathe and be in the village he was head of.

It's a very different experience compared to the one you'd had when you'd discovered a major facet of what made the Rokudaime tick, what made him get up to do his job every day.

After allowing him seven years of a constant one day vigil at the memorial stone, you'd quietly confronted Kakashi about his day off. You'd been the head of his security for his entire tenure at that point, and as such afforded yourself a little deeper of a friendship with him—as much as your own mask would allow. His response was to slowly and carefully recite every name on the cenotaph to you, as well as when and how they died—if they'd had family when they died, who had come to their funeral, or if there had even been a personal funeral. As Hokage he didn't need to know that information, but as Hatake Kakashi he'd forcibly memorized all of it. He also attended every funeral for every fallen shinobi.

Kakashi's way of connecting to the village he loved was to know who had died for it—and he'd told his student to connect to the village which had hated him as a boy.

Because of the Rokudaime's advice, Naruto didn't always go to Ichiraku to see old man Teuchi—he tried as best he could to frequent other establishments. And he didn't confine himself to the soldiers who had died for the village, but he also visited the markers for civilians killed in attacks on the village. You wish you'd seen it sooner, otherwise you wouldn't be sporting nineteen gray hairs—not that you've made Moegi count them or anything, that would be weird and narcissistic. She just knows you care about your hair and tells you whenever you have a gray one poking out of your scalp. It's not like you've gotten down on your knees and begged her or anything.

* * *

 

You smile as you slip off your shoes to go into the house, your eye flicking words into your brain as you glance at the door post. It was the only work which Bird had allowed you to do on the home he forced his squad to build. He felt personally responsible for assigning a newbie crew for your protection years ago, which indirectly caused the destruction of your previous home. You liked Bird, he's a good man who let you be when you went to the memorial stone. He was always curious, but he didn't ask you why you went there so often. The reason you'd never requested a different personal logistics man was because of that, it had been nice to be surrounded by people who hadn't totally peppered you with questions all the time. It's why you'd joined the ANBU in your youth—no one ever asked you questions, not even "why?"

Because back then, to have the ANBU show up to someone's door meant one of two things—the ANBU were on an assassination mission, or they were assigned as escorts for a personal meeting with the Hokage. The first few months of your tenure, until Bird had been fully assigned as the primary security logistics man for your security detail, you'd struggled with new ANBU recruits asking you "why," among other things. They didn't ask _aloud_ of course, but, being ANBU yourself, you know how to speak without saying a thing, not even moving a muscle—and these new kids were _freakishly_ talkative.

But Bird seemed to understand his job, and you liked it. He'd even backed off when you'd established a pattern of going to the memorial stone. You never went the same day every week, nor did you go on any sort of schedule. It was damn hard to figure out an algorithm which was nearly random with only the input of seven as a constant, but you aren't called a genius for nothing.

Or maybe you _are_ called a genius for nothing, since you couldn't figure out how to get out of being Hokage all those years ago…

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You think that fate deals people cruel hands sometimes. You dealt with fate's shit for thirty years before you got a hand with a little happiness, and even then fate didn't stop messing with you. You'd thought for most of your childhood that your father was scum—a cruddy hand to be dealt when your father _had_ been one of the most revered shinobi to ever live, an even cruddier hand when people kept comparing you to him and his daring do. And then you gained a best friend who made you believe that Hatake Sakumo was a good, honorable man—but you'd only had a best friend for about seventeen point nine seconds before he was brutally murdered by enemy nin. That was a _real_ cruddy hand that day.

And then you hadn't even gotten a break from the horror—your other two teammates were dead in less than two years.

And then you'd been dealt, after years of abject suffering—which you were beginning to not mind, it wasn't like things were ever going to change, why not accept it?—a decent, playable hand. A new Team Seven, with a new Rin, a new Obito (this time around with added idiocy), and a new Kakashi. It had been more difficult than you'd imagined to be a new Minato, but Team Seven was the best hand that fate had dealt to you in two decades.

And then it had all fallen apart, and you'd been powerless to stop it.

You had tortured yourself with guilt over Sasuke leaving, over failing Sensei as well as Sandaime in regards to Naruto, over not knowing how to teach a girl who knew everything yet knew nothing. It was Asuma who dragged you to hang out with Gai, and it was Gai who told you that you could have done nothing. It was what was meant to be, and it would work out somehow, no one could suffer so much and be rewarded so poorly. It was one of the most serious non-work related conversations you'd ever had with him. Asuma had kindly pointed out that Sakura was of a different learning type altogether, and that Naruto seemed to thrive under the harshest version of 'tough love' ever seen in Konoha—being taught by Jiraiya was no easy feat, you know that. Minato-sensei's stories still strike a fearful chord deep within you, in a place buried so deeply that not even your wife tag-teaming with Morino Ibiki could bring it out.

Sensei, a grown man, a hardened shinobi, the Yondaime Hokage, married to the scariest red head in the village, had had nightmares of Jiraiya right up until his death at the hands of the Kyuubi. Naruto, months before he'd left that summer so man years ago, had whined that Jiraiya had thrown him into a ravine—Minato-sensei told you once that you were lucky your father taught you how to summon your pack of ninken, because he'd been taught how to summon by being flung bodily from a cliff.

A depressed lull had followed Asuma's mention of Naruto. Uchiha Sasuke hung in the air, his hand-shaped wings, which Naruto had described once he'd regained consciousness, ominously spread above your small drinking group.

You had failed with him, and there was no way around that. Your friends had known it, with only Gai leaning forward to shake your shoulder. Asuma, whose own prized student had been promoted, only lit another cigarette. As for Gai, his favorite student, while not having abandoned the village, had broken the team as it had functioned. Until Tsunade had come, Gai hadn't been able to think most days. Now as he focused on getting Lee back up to par, he was just as bad.

Yes, you'd been dealt a horrible hand so soon after getting such a promising one. You'd retreated into work—the Leaf needed the income you could bring, it was your duty to the village which protected all of your precious places. Almost all of your precious people were gone from it, it was the places they'd loved which remained. Work couldn't deal you very many bad hands—the best hand was an accomplished mission, while the worst was one you'd never see because you'd be dead.

And then you'd gotten a wildcard—Naruto came back, and Sakura was cleared to go on missions rather than constantly studying, and an old ANBU teammate was assigned to your team. At the time you'd felt that what happened next was nothing short of horrific. Ever since Rin and Obito had died, one of your biggest fears was becoming attracted to a teammate—from the outside looking in, it looked horrible. At first, when you realized that Sakura was a beautiful young woman (who was, at sixteen, old enough by Konoha law to get married of all things), you'd been plunged into despair.

You hadn't had a hand this bad for thirteen years—when the girl on your team loved you and your other teammate loved her and you'd loved neither of them until it was too late. Now your past experience spoke to you to get a move on—she could take a solo A-rank at any moment, just like Rin had, and never come home. But other experience told you not to do anything—you'd managed to almost ruin your friendship with Gai because of impulsive actions.

But then fate had taken a few years off from harassing you—it hadn't taken Sakura away, nor had it taken you away. It stopped sniping off your friends so quickly, and it started dealing you good hands. Like getting married, and starting a family. Not every hand was wonderful, but soon enough you were often able to see some good in each hand.

Up until this very instant, the most tragic things which fate had thrown into your cards had been unpreventable deaths. Your mother-in-law Sayoko dying of heart failure was something which no medic-nin in the village had been able to stop. And then there was your son, too, who had been taken away from you before you'd even known him.

When Shizune had told the two of you to think of two names rather than one, you'd been teased by fate into entertaining the idea of naming your second set of twins after your father and Sakura's grandfather—Sakumo and Riichirou. Riichirou had barely survived being born. Sakumo hadn't. You'd mentally thrown up your hands at that, berating yourself for being so arrogant as to name the living after the dead. No matter how much she pleaded and whined at you about naming the next girl after your mother, you'd stubbornly said 'no,' as well as refusing to name the last one, a boy, after Sensei. It was one of the harshest lessons you'd been forced to learn by the death of loved ones—you cannot wish the dead living.

Which brings you to the present, holding a little boy who has jet black hair like his father but calm serene black eyes like his mother—thank the _gods_ for that at least. It's a shame about the eyebrows though, but at least he didn't inherit the trademark eyes of Lee and Hatori, instead inheriting good strong Hatake eyes.

If only Hoshimi knew how much she is tempting fate right now, though. Sure you're not _dead_ , but it sends a cold chill down your spine about the kid in your arms. Doesn't Hoshimi know how awkward Rock Kakashi sounds? Does she have no pity for her son? Just because he didn't inherit those obscenely prominent eyelashes doesn't mean that he's safe from the world. In five years he's going to be as emotionally abused by his peers as Sakura was—and that's some deep emotional scarring, you know that for a fact.

Your son-in-law, too annoyingly good natured to possibly merit your wrath even on the worst of days, stares his creepy over-eyelashed stare at you. It's uncomfortable to be committed to memory, especially when you leveled the same stare at him years ago when he started dating your daughter. When you'd first met this young man you'd been as suspicious of him as you were most boys who wanted to go out with your daughters. Only you feel like Hatori has less to worry about than you did—you've dropped not one of your seven children, or any of your grandchildren thus far, so he has no room to worry. Except as a father of so many, and a former Hokage to boot, you know that he can't help _but_ worry.

You smile (barely visibly, but still you smile), your mask down because you're inside your daughter's home, knowing exactly what he's going through. You wouldn't let anyone but Sakura hold Akihito until he was six months old—Sakura had to spirit him away undetected to get him to his check-ups, because you hated that a stranger was holding your kid. Your argument was that Akihito didn't like strangers, using the evidence of his shyness and quiet baby-whining against being around others. Sakura had said you were acting more like a baby than Akihito was about the whole thing, but as you look into Hatori's eyes (as Hoshimi babbles on about what a good baby little 'Kashi is) you can't help but feel that this is how all father's feel.

Except if Rock Hatori had _really_ wanted to protect his son, he would have picked a better name for the little tyke than _Rock Kakashi_.


	14. Breaking a Curse with Zero Shrapnel / Hiding Death is a Difficult Art

Iruka's eyebrow is twitching in a way which you can only assume from previous experience means he is about to throw someone out of a window. As the kids file out of the classroom, one silver haired girl stays behind, standing up behind her desk. Her desk which is still smoking from whatever went off inside of it moments before class ended. You can tell from the understated explosion in the small space afforded by the desk that it's Akihito's work—It's been twelve years since Kakashi dropped his three-almost-four-year-old son off at your house for a day of explosive tag training.

He'd said to you that it was to keep the kid occupied and get him used to writing his own seals. One look at the adorable little Kakashi-clone and you hadn't been able to say 'no.' Well, that and the fact that a few years before he and Sakura had gotten married, you'd been literally rolling in dango because of Kakashi's 'nonexistent' jealous streak. It was a small way to pay him back for all the lovely treats he'd left you with years ago.

Small explosions are one of your own specialties in the realm of exploding tags—big bangs and zero shrapnel. Your expertise is why Kakashi didn't teach his own kid, because Copy Ninja Kakashi doesn't _do_ zero shrapnel explosions.

The silver haired girl's eyes are glazed over as you make your way into the classroom to start erasing Iruka's work on the board, in preparation for your own class. Iruka, meanwhile, is sputtering impotently. He's a Chuunin-lifer, as you call those who never even train to take the Jounin exam, and there's no way he could have known that Akihito had broken into his classroom to paste the inside of a desk with exploding tags. He just doesn't have the skill necessary for the task, and regrettably neither did the silver haired girl who is slowly loading her books into her bag. Her name is…Hatori? Hanabi? Something like that…Damn Hatakes, breeding like rabbits.

"Anko, this is the sixth time this year that this has happened—things keep exploding in this classroom and I can't—I can't even—I ca—" You grab the poor man's shoulder's and push him out of the room and shove him in the direction of where his next class is waiting for him. Iruka isn't a field man, never was and never will be at his age, so he can't deal with unexpected things like unplanned explosions in the classroom. It's amazing he survived not only Naruto, but almost an entire brood of Hatake children. You are basically just taking pity on the guy and dealing with his shell-shocked student for him. Speaking of said student…

"Hey kid, what's with the face?" The girl is looking at you with admiration and betrayal—which is freaky on an eight year old.

"You're the one who taught Akihito how to write his own exploding tags, aren't you, Anko-sensei?" The soot on the kid's face and in her hair make her look comical, but you forcibly repress your laughter because Hatake children (in your firm and well researched belief) are lethal before age four. You dare people to ask you how you know that, after having taught both the eldest boys how to write any kind of exploding tag at all. Akihito had mastered the art in months, Masato had mastered it by the time he was six.

"Yeah, what of it?"

"I need you to teach me what you taught him. If I need to bribe you I will."

* * *

 

You eye Shizune suspiciously in the hallway you're both standing in. She's a student thief, regardless of circumstances. Hoshimi has been _your_ student since she was eight. She's been your redemption—proof that you would not follow in your mentor's footsteps as so many shinobi do. One-on-one mentorship for Leaf shinobi predates the settlement of the Leaf itself, which is a double-edged sword. There were good teams of teachers and students—the First and Second Hokage teaching the Third everything he knew was an example of a good one. The next two mentorships in that line were poor examples—Sarutobi's favoritism of Orochimaru, and your own treatment at Orochimaru's hands. Hoshimi redeemed your line of teaching—stopped the decay of a line which was begun by the Shodai and the Nidaime.

Shizune was brought on board because your student wanted to become a medical ninja. You are hardly qualified, and the girl's mother suggested you choose a co-teacher in either Shizune or Ino. When given the choice, you chose the fairly quiet brunette rather than the loud and brash blond. There was only room for one loud and brash teacher, and _you_ fit the bill. But just because you chose Shizune doesn't mean you like her. You in fact really _dis_ like her.

Shizune, after all, is the one who months ago tried to talk Hoshimi out of signing a summoning contract with snakes—preferring Tsunade-hime's slugs or even the Hatake family contract with ninken. Your student eventually signed two summoning contracts—something which no one had thought possible for generations. How she kept them straight in her head was a marvel, and the skill was being feverishly researched—was it possible for _anyone_ to sign and maintain two contracts? You like to think it's your brilliance as a teacher that it's possible the girl can summon snakes _and_ slugs. You still don't like the coldness in Shizune's eyes as she argued against summoning snakes.

She couldn't understand, however, because she had no prestigious teaching line to trace—Tsunade had been ignored compared to Orochimaru, by the Third, and so Shizune was the first student truly focused on, the first valued student of the line. Of the Sannin, hers was the smallest, smaller than even Orochimaru's. Jiraiya's, on the other hand, was the most successful—he taught the Fourth, who taught the Sixth who taught the Seventh who in all likelyhood has also taught a future Hokage.

But yours was the fallen line—the one disgraced by Orochimaru, a black mark put on your records which made most shinobi shy away from letting you teaching their children. But that Hatake Kakashi had given you a chance—letting you teach his eldest children at very young ages, and paving the way (sort of) for Hoshimi to demand you as a teacher.

And that's why you don't like Shizune, at the heart of it. She doesn't have anything to prove as a mentor, she insulted your snakes daily for months, and she's in the midst of stealing your student. At least in your eyes she is. Hoshimi still shows up at your door at four AM every day for a two hour taijutsu routine, followed by an hours' lesson in ninjutsu. You're still the first person she sees every day, for three hours every day.

But after an hour break from seven to eight, she doesn't return to you anymore. She goes to Shizune's clinic to train with the hated medic-nin.

The medic-nin who is glaring right back at you in the hallway. You're both waiting for word on Hoshimi's condition, the girl had been dragged back to Konoha barely alive after her mission went wrong. By the accounts of her teammates, she'd thrown herself in the path of a hail of poisoned senbon to protect her already injured comrade. You grudgingly admit to yourself that without Shizune's expertise in poisons and their antidotes, your student may very well have died.

It doesn't help the fact that the girl thought she was proficient enough—from Shizune's ill-reserved praise, no doubt—to handle the poison. Since Shizune had joined you in teaching Hoshimi, the girl had become rebellious against your lack of praise—it seemed that Shizune praised the girl willy-nilly compared to you who gave words of praise about as freely as you gave a toast to Orochimaru.

* * *

 

You know that Anko-sensei is disappointed with the three of you, from the sad look she's giving you from her seat at your bedside. Shizune-sensei is on your other side, holding your hand and staring at nothing. She won't look at you, and you're glad of it. If both your sensei looked at you like Anko-sensei is now, you'd shrivel up and die of guilt. Over the years that you've known Anko-sensei, you've realized the importance of your success to her. She's from that old-guard of Konoha who believe that who taught who matters for generations. The idea is losing ground with your generation and the one just behind you, but you can't teach a veteran shinobi new throwing styles.

Anko-sensei believes you are redeeming her own failed mentorship—that if she can just succeed with you, turn you into a fine shinobi, that the transgressions of her own mentor against her can be forgiven. Mom says it's a fool's dream, but she doesn't say it meanly—she's best friends with one of the most foolish shinobi to ever live, and that man is Nanadaime Hokage at the moment.

Shizune-sensei is part of that old guard as well—and she believes that nothing will change as Anko-sensei teaches you. The strain is constantly palpable between the two dark haired women. One striving to change the past and one resigned to the future. To prove to both of them that Anko-sensei is right, you signed your contract with the snakes first, one of the more dangerous and tricky contracts to sign and keep. Snakes would eat you alive if you pissed them off while you were weak—if they didn't kill you the first time you summoned them.

Shizune-sensei had been horrified that you'd signed the contract, much less that you'd summoned a large snake the first time you'd smacked your palms against the earth. Anko-sensei had been horrified that you'd done it alone, without telling her, but there had been respect and pride in her eyes every time you'd summoned an infant constrictor—given to you by it's mother as your personal summons, to be named and trained by you.

Dad, who had been making noises that it was time to sign a summoning contract, had been momentarily depressed when he'd found out that you hadn't carried on with the family contract. But he'd been more than helpful, along with Anko-sensei, on how to summon specific animals and how to care for them if they came to you or were given to you when they were young.

Nene, the huge white constrictor you'd first summoned, had allowed you to name the little snakeling she'd given you. Her white skin almost sparkled in the light, and she refused to be dismissed until you named her. That was when Anko-sensei had found you, sitting on Nene's back—she was forty feet long, and more than strong enough to allow you to sit on her—with the little white boa wrapped around your arm in tight loops. She was too small to do you any damage, which is why Nene gave her to you after all. Anko-sensei hadn't freaked out at you at the time, only kneeling in front of you as you gazed in wonder at your snake.

"You should name her, she wants to go home probably, as does Nene-san." You glanced at your teacher in annoyance, she was being obvious about wanting to yell at you. "Hoshimi, you need to name her to make her yours." And so it had gone for another fifteen minutes, you being silent—trying to tune out the voice of your teacher—and Anko-sensei almost pleading with you.

" _Yasuyo_." You'd startled Sensei with that, having almost yelled it. Peaceful era…you'd been wracking your brain for hours before Sensei had shown up, trying to think of a name which would convey to Anko-sensei and the rest of the world that teachers do not curse those that they teach. Students of evil teachers do not necessarily turn out evil themselves.

Nene hmmmed beneath you, pleased with the name you'd given the little snake. In an instant both snakes had vanished—one to your mild surprise as Yasuyo popped out of existence from around your arm and one to your great surprise as Nene disappeared from underneath you.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

Baa-chan is dying, and you don't want to be the one to tell Mom.

You're twenty four, and your parents are just months away from their thirty first anniversary, and it will crush Mom when she finds out that the Godaime Hokage has weeks to live. You are Tsunade's favorite, excelling in every area Mom excelled at—only you're _better_. That's why Tsunade came to you for a second opinion on her own diagnosis—because you are the best.

Her cells are dying, slowly but picking up speed. There is little that can be done other than lessen the pain she experiences—so far she's been able to hide it from Mom, but she can't bring herself to tell her surrogate daughter that she's dying. So you offered to tell her for your grandmother in all respects but blood. You don't _want_ to tell Mom, but it's either you or Takara—and Takara already had to tell Mom (and Dad, he doted on his in-laws for some strange reason… even though Grandpa Haruno would rather put his hand in a blender than interact with Dad sometimes) that your _other_ Grandma was close to the end. Grandma Haruno's death had shaken Dad and Grandpa to their very inner most being, and they had found that the only people they could confide in were each other—again, Dad doted and Grandpa surreptitiously searched the house for blenders—because everyone else was some sort of medic, or just not as openly affected. After Grandma Haruno had passed away, quietly in her sleep one night after months of slowly dying of heart failure, the only person who Grandpa would even talk to was Dad. Grandpa still couldn't look straight faced at Takara for very long, and it's been three years since she'd informed the family.

That's why you have to tell everyone, and not her—you aren't going to make her go through that again, not with her own family members. And then there's the fact that none of your other siblings are fully trained medic-nin besides Takara. Sure Akihito is a more than capable field medic, being the freak genius of the clan and all, but he is no doctor. Not like you, Takara, Mom, and Tsunade-baa-chan are.

On the day you got the test results back, confirming what both you and Tsunade already suspected, you'd went home to Hatori crying. He'd held you, sitting on his lap with his arms wound around you, well into the night—even after the tears had stopped. Hatori had the highest respect for Baa-chan, Baa-chan had saved his father's life decades ago—she'd performed an impossible surgery so that his father could continue on his path as a Konoha shinobi. The Lees had a strong connection to the Godaime. And also, Hatori was the best suited to comfort you—the only person more suited to the job would have been Mom. Except you couldn't have gone to Mom, because that would involve telling her why you're so very upset.

But you don't know how you'll bring yourself to tell her that Baa-chan is dying, you just don't.

* * *

 

Tsunade-sama has been your mother-stern aunt-teacher-and sister all wrapped into one for most of your life. She is the one who taught you how to lace senbon with deadly poison, how to brew antidotes using only grass and spit and chakra, and she is the one who allowed you to come and go with her as you pleased. And you'd always been pleased to go with her, even in the hard times.

Except for right now, as you prepare a pain reliever—something which won't activate her chakra, which puts her in more pain these days—at her bedside. She won't go to the hospital, and you agree with her. There is nothing anyone can do for her there, the lifetime of gradual chakra depletion is something which cannot be reversed. She knew that when she forged ahead into unknown medical territory—inventing jutsu that played with mitosis and the length of cell-life—that she was decreasing her lifespan.

How old might she have become without the curse her genius put on her? She is nearing ninety, and if not for her pain she could still be a fine Academy sensei. Chuunin level at the least, at the end. Most shinobi ended up too weak to stand if they reached her age, which they rarely did. Of course she's been retired for decades—since she handed Kakashi-san the Hokage hat, which is at least twenty five years ago now.

Through the sheet of your salt and pepper hair you examine your mother-aunt-teacher-sister, sleeping soundly. Her face is old, and her hands are bent, but there is still a warmth to her mouth—and you know to her eyes when she's awake—so you keep her out of pain as best you can, to keep that warmth on her face. Your protégé, Sakura's daughter Hoshimi, hands you your ingredients one by one, in order, cut to specificity, without bothering your introspection. You are not at her level—she surpassed you when she was nineteen—but you formed the foundation of her knowledge, formed in her mind what Sakura and Tsunade built upon. For that, she is your protégé.

It is her grandmother who is dying here—Sakura's mother in all but blood—and it falls to her to tell her mother. It isn't your place to tell Sakura, the bond the two of you share with Tsunade is very different between you. There are far too many titles for you to focus very much on one—instead focusing on all of them at once; Genma says it's adorably neurotic but that you should try to string yourself a little closer to the ground—but for Sakura, Tsunade is simply teacher-mother. She can focus on what Tsunade means to her where you can't.

* * *

 

You know that Tsunade-baa-chan is dying before even she does, it seems. The extra wrinkle in her brows (she has deigned to appear _sixty_ with her age jutsu) when she holds your grandchild, the way she holds onto the infant for just a blink longer than she did a year ago. And you should know how she behaves around babies—as Hokage, you are both expected to hold and kiss any baby thrust at you. It infuriates and boggles the minds of the ANBU who surround the two of you—someone could coat a baby's cheek with poison, or it could be a tiny henge, or it could be a rather nasty summons like a ferret or snake.

You usually ignore your personal guards and their neurosis because, really, it's the way they show they care. Which was good. Very good. Because they're the ones who're supposed to notice if babies cheeks are dripping poison, the ones to see through a henge, the ones to scent out summons strange to the village. They can't, however, be expected to see the threat of old age as their previous leader begins to fade.

You, however, are the Nanadaime—you're supposed to see the roots of every tree in the village, as well as know the leaves by name, or something lame and stupid like that. Stupid or not, however, the tree named Tsunade hadn't been leafing out as generously as it had in previous years. You saw her as her super resilient body began to fail her, and you tipped her off to what you saw.

"Baa-chan, are you sure you're feeling alright today? I'm sure that Sakura-chan can come up to have a look at you if you're feeling the least bit poorly…" you trailed off, keeping your big blue eyes hopeful and expectant—pity entering anyone's eyes other than Jiraiya's was a death sentence with this woman. Since Ero-sennin died more than thirty years ago, no one is allowed to look on this woman with pity.

Even if she is dying.

* * *

 

You think it was admirable for everyone to have tried to keep the news from Sakura. But one of your sons married a Yamanaka girl, so word was bound to get out eventually. And just a whisper of doubting curiosity was all it took for a medic to send a cursory check through someone's system, just a touch infused with chakra, to find out the truth of the matter.

Tsunade probably never noticed, because your Sakura is _good_ at what she does.

She's sitting in the living room, in the chair nearest the kitchen, in the dark when you find her. It's four in the morning, and although you still get up at this hour routinely, your nearly sixty five year old body is heartily protesting this morning. But Sakura needs you, so you go to her. Your mother-in-law is dying, for a second time, and Sakura has probably spent the whole night awake.

There are photographs spread out on the table, you can just make out their black rectangles against the white of the table. Sakura is shaking with tears as you reach out to wrap your arms around her, one arm around her middle and the other around her shoulders. She's too far gone with weeping right now to hear any words you might have, so you don't offer any. When the sun rises she will probably rouse herself to make some coffee for those who might drop by for breakfast—it was hilarious really, the two of you old people living by yourselves in this big house meant for nine—later on. But the sun won't be rising for another hour at least.

So you hold her, as best you can.

Because Tsunade-baa-chan is dying, and there's not a thing that Sakura or anyone can do for her.


	15. Field Reattachment Surgery / Rhymes with Father

You walk calmly down the street where your former apprentice lives, hardly weighed down by what you carry with you (a brace of fancy kunai and two boxes of shuriken handmade by weapons makers at Mori, the best weapons foundry in Fire Country for Akihito and Masato; a storybook titled "From Crochet Hooks to Senbon, The Making of a Fine Kunoichi" for Takara; a similar book about the merits of hide and seek for young shinobi for Takeo; a shogi board blanket for Riichirou, complete with big felt 'shogi' pieces; a kunoichi doll for Hoshimi; and a weapons pouch shaped teething toy for Minoru.

The street is bustling with shops in this area, being located not a quarter mile away from the center of the village and thus the Hokage Tower. The few residential doorways usually lead to second storey apartment complexes, the windows of which overlook the unusually wide street below. It's a wide street because of a double-fake-out technique to be utilized if Konoha is invaded. Trap genjutsu are typically placed on narrow, winding streets in towns as big as Konoha, and are hardly ever placed on streets this wide because they would be too easily detected. On most maps it looks like this is the only street in the village which would be too hard to protect with such methods—which is exactly why the rest of the village is mostly trap-free. This street, at night, is one of the most dangerous streets for a foreigner to Konoha to travel on—native villagers know where the traps are, how to get out of them or avoid them, but foreigners don't. The people of Konoha put traps where invaders would never expect traps to be.

It's why the Hokage lives on this street—because he refused to live in the Tower like a good, well behaved Hokage, the elders forced him to live here on this particular street. He lives in a free standing house with his rather large family, a pretty affair with a traditionally sloped roof and a wrap-around porch. The front garden is nothing to speak of, but the one behind the house is one of the prides of Konoha.

When it's not being destroyed by the Hokage's kids, that is.

* * *

 

"Come on boy-o, get off the ceiling before ol' baa-chan makes you." You aren't joking that you'll make him, even if you tear a leg off at this point—if he's got the chakra control that his mother has, you might just have to perform an emergency reattachment. The things these kids force you to do-ridiculousness. And you'd really rather not tell Sakura that you and Takeo had been having a _minor_ disagreement about bathtime when you ripped the kid's foot off. Not that you're going to do that…why would you ever think of doing that to a five year old? More importantly a five year old whose mother has come to be what you consider the daughter you never had the chance to have.

"Kakashi, you certainly start 'em early, doncha?" you growl as you struggle to detach the pink haired little boy from the ceiling, one clawing toe at a time. Takeo whines in a manner even more ferocious than his oldest brother Akihito—and you should know, the nine year old brat spent all of dinner whining at you about never getting the good missions and how Iruka-sensei still treated him like a pre-Genin rather than a full fledged Genin with a headband and everything and how he was going to become a medi-Hokage so he could be like his mom _and_ his dad, and you barely checked the urge to chuck him out a window. Little Masato had just stared between you and his older brother, his hand wrapped longingly around the mask curled at his throat—some kids had safety blankets, the Hatakes had masks. The kid isn't allowed to wear it in the house, but when his brother starts getting genius-y he tries to hide behind his little grey mask. You're not really one to judge, because otherwise he comes from a fine family of shinobi—granted only three of them are actually practicing shinobi, Kakashi, Sakura, and Akihito, but with behavior like Takeo's you can only expect great things from the six younger kids.

But why you volunteered— _volunteered_ —to babysit this rabble is beyond you as Takara starts to tell you about her taijutsu training in the high, irritating, and demanding voice of an earnest child. It's nice that she's come out of hiding herself, however, making your job easier. You've already managed to get the three toddlers penned up with enough traps to stump even nine year old Akihito—who to your infinite pride and frustration is excelling at the art of both making and getting out of traps. Speaking of the two eldest boys, you have them stationed (finally) in the garden, going through several slow kata designed to calm the mind and tucker out small eight and nine year old bodies.

Once you get Takeo off the ceiling you will only need to bathe him and corral him with his now located sister.

Which leaves Riichirou. You can't tell these days if Kakashi and Sakura knew that the kid was going to become so logical so fast, but you can definitely tell that of all the Hatake children, he's living up to his name far better than any of his siblings. He'd gone upstairs to play a kids' strategy game against himself after dinner—Takeo, his usual partner, far more interested in having you tell a story about the brave and valiant ninja Sakumo and his tiny silver haired son than being beaten by his younger brother at a strategy game. The other kids had snuggled up around you as you'd told the story. You haven't seen Riichi-kun for a while.

Oh he's around—you aren't old and senile enough to lose track of a mere seven chakra signatures—but Takeo's insistence on a game of honorable shinobi versus nukenin had scattered the kids all around the house. You were the honorable shinobi, going all through the land on a quest to redeem all of the ninja who had deserted the village for hopeless endeavors—it seems that little Akihito has been reading quite a lot into his teacher Naruto's actions. While that was good for actual missions and real life, it was proving to be a pain in the ass as Kakashi's kids, all of them geniuses, got a little too far into the game.

And that is why you're trying to coax Takeo off the ceiling—he has apparently elected to take the legendary Sasuke-route of the game and is refusing to "come back" even when caught. Would a field reattachment leave a mark? Like a horrendous scar which any loving mother would notice immediately? Because if it doesn't, then you feel you can't be opposed to such a surgery—Sakura would never have to know, and with the proper bribe-to-threat ratio she wouldn't ever find out.

It's not like she or Kakashi baby their children—most kids know about chakra control at Takeo's age, but they can't _wallwalk_ when they're this young. Kakashi had Akihito throwing childrens' kunai before his third birthday, and Masato had started picking up shuriken when he was around that age as well. The fact that Akihito made Genin at eight is amazing and slightly terrifying too—there are six more little monsters lined up to follow his reign of terror. The guilty looks a few years ago exchanged between Kakashi and Sakura as you (tried to, at least) mediate between them and Akihito's academy sensei were more than enough for you to figure out what manner of hellion they'd raised. And then there was the near-nervous breakdown Umino Iruka had had the day after you'd announced that Kakashi was going to succeed you as Hokage. Sakura had apparently approached him about becoming a regular sitter for the kids, because of how well he'd done with the boys and the twins. He was having none of it.

* * *

 

"No, Hokage-sama, you need to tell them to find someone else—I don't care that the kids like me, they're going to kill me! Hokage-sama, think of the children, think of the little kids at the Academy who are going to lose their general skills sensei when Hatake Akihito murders me when I won't bring him tempura when I babysit! Please, Hokage-sama, don't make me go back there!" You'd sighed as your best Academy sensei wept openly in your office. Hopefully it was only yourself, Genma, and Raidou who were hearing this—it would embarrass the man if word were to get out that he had a phobia of the Hatake kids.

Because things were shaping up that there were going to be a _lot_ of Hatake kids in the near future. If being together for more than a month after a high stress mission got them more kids, you can't imagine what the stress of being Hokage coupled with constant cabin fever are going to do to Kakashi.

* * *

 

And you're the last of the Sannin, of course you were right. With no missions to go on, Kakashi never going on them because rarely was there a mission which only a shinobi of his skill level was required, and Sakura because she was prohibited from foreign missions because of diplomatic issues, the two of them had bred like rabbits. Where the first four kids had taken five or six years with a big gap between the older and the younger kids, the last three took…four years…ish.

You are delighted most of the time to look after the kids when Sakura has a late hospital shift or Kakashi has a mass of paperwork he has to complete before coming home. You love the little brats, even when they've outgrown their cute infancies. They call you Baa-chan, and you let them, because Sakura has always introduced you to them as such. It doesn't rankle like it does when someone like Naruto calls you Tsunade-baa-chan, as almost an insult. These kids mean it like they mean it when they say it to their actual grandmother Sayoko, and you love them for it.

It's like you weren't deprived of your future with Dan, growing old and taking care of little grandchildren. You have Shizune and Sakura for daughters, and you have Sakura's seven brats as grandkids.

Now if you could only get Takeo _down_. And where _is_ Riichirou?

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

When your first two children were adorable little Kakashi-clones, you wondered if perhaps those Hatake genes were a little strong. Not only looks-wise, but gender-wise. For several generations, Kakashi has told you, there were very few girls born to the family. And the rest of the kids, the boys, were a little too devil-may-care for their own good, leading to the present decline in the family numbers. Never having gotten very big, the old, _old_ Hatake clan hadn't had to fall very far to only having two or three members at a time.

Mostly a father-to-son deal, too. It's a fact which made you suspect you'd only have boys, and you weren't very far from the truth. Out of seven surviving children, five are boys. Only three of your children inherited pink hair, and only one of those three was a girl. Your other girl might as well be a female henge of your husband.

You'd thought Kakashi would be very hands-off in regard to being protective of his daughters, with five sons most men would have figured that to be enough of a vanguard to keep nasty teenage boys away from their beautiful, virtuous daughters. The boys are indeed quite protective of their sisters Takara and Hoshimi. Akihito, Masato, and Takeo tag-teamed against most of the village concerning their sister Takara. Not that it saved them much heartbreak, Takara willfully pursued boys which her brothers couldn't find fault with—and your daughter pursued them with a _vengeance_. The boys, two older and one just barely younger, were a screening process almost. The same was true with Riichirou and Minoru where Hoshimi was concerned. It was their father who would put his foot down or not about the nasty teenage boys who made it through the brothers' filters. It was their father who in a sense defended his daughters' honor.

Such as when Naruto's son Aito stood her up in favor of going out and goofing off with Shikamaru's son Asuma. You'd never seen Kakashi so angry about something so civilian before in your life—although he'd controlled it by the time that Aito showed up (no doubt dragged to your home by his ear by his mother if Hinata's presence and Aito's red ear were any sort of evidence) to apologize to Takara. Kakashi had suggested a friendly spar with the newly promoted Chuunin and had taken Aito's "eheheheh…" of fear as agreement. Hinata hadn't shown her son an ounce of sympathy as Kakashi clamped his hand on the boy's shoulder.

You'd felt so guilty for Aito's impending hospitalization that you'd invited Hinata in for an early lunch in the garden. Just like you, Hinata had changed immensely in the last twenty years. She'd been the one who asked Naruto out, only after worrying about it to you for several hours. She'd wanted to talk to someone in a stable relationship, for that friend to support her, as well as someone who'd fisted the kunai and _done_ something about her feelings. Sakura had apparently fit the bill. Naruto had been shocked when Hinata admitted she liked him, and his eloquent "But…why?" was well renowned among your friends. He couldn't or wouldn't see (for a long time too) the qualities which made someone—someone like Hinata, raised in supposed greatness—like him.

His kids were knuckleheads though, a fact which was well-agreed upon by most Jounin in the last few years who'd been assigned as their instructors. As her kids had grown, Hinata had refined and enhanced the Hyuuga aggressive streak as defense against their Uzumaki spirits. Hence her dragging her son across town by his ear to apologize. She normally was as noisy as a butterfly and as stern as a daffodil, like she was for most of that impromptu lunchdate with you, but something about her very proper upbringing, when added to the "Naruto" in her children, led something very violent to come out of her.

It turned out later you needn't have worried for Aito-kun's safety, as he marked the first casualty of Kakashi's long track record of never quite hospitalizing the young men who upset his daughters. Things like a boy not reciprocating a crush weren't offenses which merited Kakashi's actions, it was found out (which you know was likely a relief to a large portion of the shinobi in the kids' age group if the upswing of mental health during psyche evaluations was anything to go by), but things like what Aito had done were inexcusable to the Copy Nin.

Or, as most of the youngsters running around knew him, _Rokudaime-sama_. If "Kakashi-senpai" made him feel a little too revered for his age, and "Kakashi-sensei" made him feel old before his time, then "Kakashi-sama" was something so horrific that it was to be used only to tease him, and only by you. He was, and still is, more comfortable with Rokudaime-sama or just plain Kakashi. If he goes by the title, then it isn't him that's old, it's the title. He can take off the mask of Rokudaime-sama easily enough and be Kakashi again.

* * *

 

You're at your daughter Hoshimi's wedding to Rock Lee's son Hatori when it occurs to you that this boy is the only boy who dated your daughter without having a close-call with the emergency room due to sudden onset of 'inflammation of a father's ill-will due to poorly intentioned or executed attentions to either of his daughters,' or even 'sudden acquisition of personal knowledge through experience of the capabilities of a Hokage with an Uchiha eyeball' better known by its acronym of 'SAPKECHUE.' In an odd stirring of fate, the acronym and "chichi-ue" rhyme curiously well. Although Kakashi has never once done enough damage to send anyone to the hospital, he also has never once had to give a lesson about respect to this boy. Young man. Whatever.

It was a close-call, however, when the kid told the both of you (quite boldly and _loudly_ ) that he was going to marry your daughter even if Rokudaime-sama beat the living daylights out of him. Just like his father before him has called you "Sakura-san" exclusively for coming near to forty years, this kiddo calls your daughter 'Hoshimi-chan' and your husband 'Rokudaime-sama.' Kakashi told Hatori three months ago to drop the Hokage title and go with Kakashi, or Kakashi- _san_ if he really must, but the boy showed (shows, you suppose as you watch Kakashi try to reason with the boy once again) little interest in doing so.

"My grandkids are going to call me that, just you wait," Kakashi grumbles into your ear after a few minutes, having returned from his failed debate. "It's going to be awful."

"Stop pouting, you'll make your daughter worry," you emphasize your point by smacking the back of his head—quite a reach these days, as he hasn't lost any of his height to age. You on the other hand have lost an inch. An _inch!_ At fifty, you are no longer five feet five inches tall, but rather a pathetic five feet four inches tall. At sixty four, Kakashi towers to a height you remember seeing when you were fifteen. He still slouches, which conceals his six foot two inch frame, but that only makes the spitting demon inside you angrier—poor posture can lead to a reduction in skeletal length as bones grate against bones in ways they shouldn't, muscles contort how they shouldn't, etc. You've had very good posture your entire life and yet you're the one who has lost height. Maybe he _has_ lost some height and it's just genjutsu…You violently poke him between his ribs, something which you've found will cause him to dispel genjutsu of his own manufacture—you found out by _accident_. By. Accident.

"I'm glad they're not doing the whole civilian wedding like Etsu made Minoru do. That was the most awkward three hours of my life." Kakashi doesn't comment anymore on your random abuse of his person, it's become so ingrained in how he sees the world that it doesn't even faze him anymore. These days (actually the last decade really) it's just a way for you to relieve stress easily in a way which lets him help you without getting into the gritty emotions of it all.

"You weren't alone in that, I recall a certain Nara clansman holing up with you in the darkest corner of the room." If he's going to open himself up to ribbing, you are going to rib him!

"That's another thing that made it awkward. My son was now going to be legally allowed to do unspeakable things to his one and only daughter. I can only imagine the horrors of having twice as much pressure centered on him. At least with Hoshimi and Takara it's been spread out between them, I can't bring myself to worry more about either of them. Shikamaru only had one girl to focus that impressive brain power on." Kakashi trails off for a moment, looking out at Hatori and Hoshimi doting on one another, "But it was the darkest corner of the room and despite our common and uncomfortable knowledge, we had to share the spot out of pure altruism on each of our parts."

"Yosh! Rokudaime-sama," a quick, green bow is executed by Lee, whose only change since his teenage years was the fact that his hair was now liberally interspersed with brilliant white hairs, "and Sakura-chan, you must come out of this place, the blackest of all the darkened corners in the building, and join the festivities in honor of our children who, in the springtime of their youth hav—"

"Yare, yare, we're coming, we're coming."


	16. The New Jiraiya / Gonna Beat Your Ass to Death with It

Jiraiya-sama has been dead for more than thirty five years when a new series of Icha Icha begins to be published. You are, of course, totally thrilled, and begin eating up every book, staying up for hours on end to read and re-read them. The stories are _real_ and they are _deep_ , complicated in the way that only good stories can be, and dare you say it—they're better than the original series. The characters are even more believable, and their stories are even more enthralling. You put Tactics on the shelf with it's fellows in favor of the new series. Half of your family reads them too, which means that Tactics is joining five other sets of Icha Icha that are already on said shelf. With your neurosis about the treatment of your own copies, each of your sons has bought or been given his own trilogy. The reasons are as varied as your children are.

Akihito breaks the books' backs, the creases blurring out the title and author, and the pages are dog-eared. He tears through them routinely, drawing comparisons and conclusions between the three—you're proud of your son seeing the interconnected epic which Icha Icha really is, but you are completely unwilling to allow him to destroy your own copies. Masato has special plastic covers on his to keep them from getting scratched—you might adopt this idea if you were collecting them rather than an avid fan of them—and he reads them as slowly as you do to savor every detail.

Takeo on the other hand beats his enemies to death with them, so his books are always either totally brand new or a stomach-churning rusted brown color. You asked him once why he does this, and he tells you that he only does it to people who insult Konoha, the family—he's particularly sensitive to insults about you, his father, and you can't help but feel a twinge of worry at the boy's temper being mixed with such obvious high respect ( _note to self: do not kill yourself out of misplaced guilt. Wait, scratch that, outlive your son so that he doesn't go ballistic when you die, period._ )—and people who insult Jiraiya-sama's writing. With how many books the kid goes through, you can't help but hope that your son eases up and gets the stick out of his ass soon. Just goes to show, there's one in every clan. As for Riichirou, the racy content matter is well balanced by the intricate storyline—your gay son puts up with the well-placed sex scenes just for the tale being told. You feel it's a lasting testament to Jiraiya-sama's greatness.

And then there's Minoru who for his eighteenth birthday asked each of his brothers for a different copy of the three part series, as well as a special booklet containing some of Jiraiya-sama's unpublished short stories. He'd asked you for a specially designed pouch to keep his copies in, since such a pouch was something his older brothers had had made for their own. Minoru already, like Takeo, read on the battlefield—there was a strict vow between you and your two bookish sons to never, ever, let their mother know this. There would be hell to pay, and _you_ would be the one paying it—and recognized the dangers of having an unsecured book in the weapons pouch.

Your children's behavior, however, is radically different as the new series makes its way into your lives.

You're, in Sakura's words, a "dirty old man" of sixty two, so you curl up on the hammock in the garden and read the story aloud as she naps in your arms. It's an old comfort between the two of you—she refused to read them herself when you'd been dating, but had put up with you reading the story to her. Artfully skipping the material she found objectionable of course, because, despite the rumors that the reason the two of you had so many children was because of a few too many Icha Icha themed nights, Sakura could still be rather embarrassed by _any_ mention of intimate relations. In the years between then and now, however, she has read through Tactics, as well as getting halfway through Paradise—you'd wisely resisted teasing her, because her anger was always easily roused when she felt self-conscious, and you have accidentally provoked her enough times through the years to know when fists of doom are headed your way. The peculiar color of beet red she'd turned on page two hundred sixty nine of Paradise was where she'd stopped reading and where you'd artfully chosen to keep your mouth _shut_.

Minoru contentedly reads through the first release and to him it doesn't merit obsession, but it does merit a place in his missions pouch—a place of honor among shinobi indeed. What goes into one's missions pouch is what one deems necessary for battle. You keep scrolls in your Jounin jacket, and you keep weapons in your pouch. Your youngest son is totally the same way, methodically putting his weapons in one place and his scrolls in another. The fact that Icha Icha merits "weapon" status isn't lost on any shinobi you come across—it shows a quiet confidence of ability. Icha Icha volumes take up the space of nineteen senbon, or five shuriken, or six kunai, or two rolls of trapwire, or fifty four closely packed explosive tags. You went over the logistics of packing it in with such things when you were eighteen, just starting out on your addiction to Jiraiya's work—he wrote a lot, not just Icha Icha, which is his most famous stuff. Minoru knows as well as you do just how much he is sacrificing to carry Icha Icha into battle in a weapons pouch.

Riichirou grows bored halfway through the first book and never finishes it, giving it to his elder brother Takeo, since Takeo, like Minoru, started packing the new series into battle—but he gave enemy shinobi the "honor" to die by them as well, which is another brutal testament to skill. Takeo's "reading" habits make for happy bookstores which have grown familiar with the masked faces of your family, as well as your collective pocketbooks.

Masato debates with you for long hours if the new series, which he is uncertain of his feelings for, really deserves a spot in his weapons pouch. He likes them as much as you do, he just isn't sure if he should abandon the old trilogy for the newer, shinier, better. You don't totally convince him, but you do put the thought into his head that he isn't _abandoning_ Jiraiya's original work, he is just savoring more of the world by reading the new books. The last you saw, he was heading to the specialty covering store where he gets the covers for his books.

It's Akihito's reaction that messes with your head.

Akihito could care less about carrying copies with him—which is strange, because he knows the plots back to front, it seems. Your conversations with him about the books are as rich and detailed as the books themselves—he has so many insights to every character that even you feel lost sometimes, even to the point of spending a night reading just to catch whatever revelation or tied event he points out to you. But you hardly ever see him with any of the books—the first has a hot pink cover, pinker than Sakura's hair; the second a black and blue cover; and the third has yet to be released. The covers are iconic, and you _would_ notice if Akihito carried one of them around with him regularly. Except he doesn't. Only on missions lasting more than one or two weeks will he pack a copy, and even then he doesn't put it in his weapon's pouch, opting for his regular backpack.

It goes over your head for about a year—which means you're getting old and senile or that your son is craftier than you are. You totally know that it's the latter, because how could Sharingan no Kakashi be _old_ **or** _senile_? You're as fit as a fiddle and you'd like the world to know that.

But the fact remains that all evidence points to your son being too good at everything. His signature combat technique is Swirling Shadow, where he throws six kunai—or more if he's feeling particularly deadly—in one another's shadows. Opponents only see the first and last one if they're mediocre, as well as the ones hiding in those primary shadows if they're worth fighting, but the other two are always concealed perfectly in the dappled shadows of the other four. And his genjutsu are freakishly amazing, and always have been—he trapped Masato in one once where every road to the Academy ran back to home rather than to school, and the kid, only about ten at the time, had wandered around the house in a daze for hours before you'd gotten home and let him out of it. His ninjutsu is downright scary—you have taught him well over three hundred stolen jutsu from other countries, secrets which were only revealed to you as your opponents threw everything at you in an attempt to overcome you.

And your son can _write_ better than Jiraiya-sama _ever_ could—and as his biggest fan, your commendation, in your very humble opinion, can only be the highest of praise.

To clue your son in that you've finally spotted what he's been up to, you write up the acknowledgements for the still unreleased third book—he can write _faster_ than Jiraiya could, too, which is scary _and_ awesome—in which "The Author" thanked his father for introducing him to good literature at a young age, as well as going running with him often as a child. You only write an outline, knowing he would only correct your wording in places, and you leave it on his bed. He's the only one of your children still living in the family home, which is nice because you get to hear his muffled scream at the trap you'd set in his room. You set it up to spring the instant he touched the little note.

You have to keep your pride somehow—and if you get your kicks by boobytrapping your genius son's room, well, you're a former Hokage, no one is going to ever get the gumption to ask where you get off exactly. Except your wife. Damn. She wasn't supposed to wake up—gods, good gods, fists of doom—! It was only a few shuriken!

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You and Aito were coming home from a long diplomatic escort mission to Stone. Nanadaime-sama had sent the two of you because he himself and Rokudaime-sama had been unable to attend. Stone was funny in that sons of Kage were as respected as Kage themselves, which is why the two of you had been chosen. Well, why _you_ had been chosen—you'd fought with the Nanadaime to not be assigned with Uzumaki Hitomi, the natural choice because she was the oldest; you'd fought to have her brother Aito assigned as your mission partner.

The mission had been quite tedious, but good things had come of it. You'd seduced Aito, for one; the two of you have been dancing around a relationship for months, and you'd gotten _tired_ of it. You and Aito had convinced the Yondaime Tsuchikage that the Nanadaime Hokage was _not_ going to kill him at the next Kage summit, for seconds. And you'd also managed to cross paths with your older brother Takeo.

Well, you say "crossed paths," but both you and Aito know that "hiding in treetops and masking your chakra signatures" is a much more accurate description. Takeo was in mid-murder mode when you noticed your brother's chakra signature. Out of your seven siblings, Takeo is the scariest. He isn't the best at ninjutsu, and ever since your mom had to _break_ your wrist to heal it after his attempt at curing a sprain you've known that he's crap at _medical_ ninjutsu, and he doesn't like using genjutsu. His abilities and his attitude put him firmly in the camp of taijutsu, hand to hand, and weapon specialization.

As evidenced by the fight you'd watched. He was even being _restrained_ with his attacks—he was only using Icha Icha Paradise. Paradise is only printed in paperback, "a joy to the pocketbook too!" whereas the second book, Violence, is only printed as a hardback, "only hardened readers will be able to stand the tragic storyline contained within this cover!"

You know your brother is going easy on his opponents. You know because you went on a seven man mission to the Land of Waves with him as a peacekeeping effort about a year ago. It was led by your old Sensei, Shikamaru, and was composed of the two teams he'd trained over the years: Team Two and Team Six. Your brother was passed over as second in command by Sensei because he hadn't packed his Icha Icha Violence in his weapons pouch, which Shikamaru had taken to mean that Takeo wasn't serious about the mission, if he was putting his favorite weapon in his backpack.

You'd been chosen and Shikamaru had foisted the mission reporting duties onto you because of it. He'd dumped his notes on you as well, which made it worse because he _could_ have written everything down himself, but _no_ , so you'd written everything down and turned it in to the missions desk after returning home.

It was a peacekeeping mission, so fighting wouldn't have been expected save for the fact that the Land of Waves was one of the more unstable countries in the area. It was the country's fourth civil war in a hundred years, and your father had only mediated a peace treaty eight years ago. Konoha shinobi regularly patrolled the island chain, trying to keep the lingering violence to a minimum.

The people did not appreciate nosy shinobi poking their fingers in their business, which is why seven to ten man squads were deployed rather than the typical four. First, the locals would hire nukenin, forgetting that it was nukenin who started the latest civil war in the first place. Second, the nukenin would locate a poisons specialist—the climate of the islands made for excellent food, and just something in the air made the local sake better, and it was easy to poison food foreign to those consuming it. Third, the nukenin would follow the weakened team into the forests and try to do away with them.

Everyone except for Sarutobi Masahiro and your brother Takeo had been taken down by, ironically enough, "food poisoning," when the nukenin had decided to attack. Takeo had been on watch, reading Icha Icha Violence, when they'd crept close to the camp. You had only been able to watch weakly from your bedroll where your brother had forced you to lay down and rest.

He'd killed the first two quietly—ripping a page out of his book to give one _hell_ of a papercut across the veins and arteries hiding under the jawline of the first, and body checking the second into a tree, the spine of his book pressed viciously into the attacker's throat. The deaths were mostly silent, and Takeo had settled back down to read after hiding the bodies from view. It had taken him about four seconds, all told.

Masahiro had been woken up by the wet gurgling of the one with the slashed throat, and he'd calmly reached over and plugged the wound with a sock. The death rattle stopped quickly enough once no more air reached the straining lungs. Genjutsu specialists didn't like drawing out death—they trapped their enemies and quickly killed them, and Masahiro was the son of one of the best genjutsu specialists in Konoha.

"You don't clean things up well, Hatake-san," he muttered before rigging the traps around the camp with chakra. It was a tiny movement, but now their assailants would have to be damn careful to avoid getting a splash of acid to the face. And not just any acid—they'd but in a genjutsu at that point, and their brain would keep feeding them that acid splash again and again, until they either were released from it or died. You have averaged the numbers and found that death in Masahiro's acid trap takes about ninety seconds, all told.

A movement in the bushes signaled the first victim of the traps.

"I'd suggest you all give up now," Shikamaru-sensei managed to call weakly from his position across the fire from you. He hadn't awoken at the sound of Takeo's victim's gurgles, but rather to throw up more of his guts from the poison.

No sounds evidenced themselves other than those of the person caught in the trap—they must have been screaming pretty damn loud in their head, because you could hear their whimpering.

Shikamaru sighed and mumbled about this all being troublesome and why did Konoha have to deal with someone else's civil war anyway?

"You should come out with the intent to surrender, because otherwise I'm going to let Hatake Takeo go out and tango with you in the dark. Heard of Hatake Takeo?" the silence of the night took on a stunned quality. "Well, I'll give you to the count of three, and then I'm giving him the Okay. When he gets that Okay, he's gonna go out there in the dark with his book, and he's going to beat your asses to death with it." The silence changed from stunned to brave, and you could only huff a laugh out. Books never struck enemy shinobi as something of a weapon, but there was a growing legend in many countries about Hatake Takeo.

You used to be the scary one, more deadly than Akihito, and far less forgiving on the battlefield than any of your siblings. And then Takeo had woken up one day, or something, and gone _nuts_. He started taking so many S-ranks that the Nanadaime forbade him from taking more than five in a row, so that other Jounin could have a chance at those high paying, high risk, and for people like yourself and your brother, high entertainment missions. That was when he started beating people to death with books.

"That ero-gaki wouldn't know an exploding tag from a book, with a father like his he couldn't possibly know how to behave on the battlefield, especially bringing trash like Icha Icha on a mission." The rest of the team was starting to wake up from their fitful sleeping, and Aito, Sayuri, and Hitomi sighed in that way which all of you knew meant they understood what had been going on before they awoke. And that they knew what was going to happen next.

" _Ero-gaki?"_ Takeo was about to lose it.

"A father like… _mine_?" The nukenin, hidden as they were in the shadows of the trees and the darkness of night, had pushed the pride button. And the family button.

"Trash…?" And, most importantly, the Icha Icha button.

You'd had to give your brother your own copy of Violence to replace his, because he'd thoroughly ruined it as he'd defended it's honor. He'd decapitated four of them, gutted another, sliced two throats, and bashed in exactly one head—and you still couldn't decide if the damage was bad enough to label it just as another decapitation.

So when you and your new boyfriend came across your brother as he dealt with his enemies, both you and Aito had just hunkered down to try and attract as little attention as possible. If Takeo _did_ notice the two of you, hopefully he recognized the chakra signatures of his brother and a former teammate before he got brain-bustingly busy with Icha Icha Paradise.


	17. Family Mixer / Mother's Love

Keisuke isn't even pretending to not be doing what he's doing. He's looking for a blender, or other such dangerous appliance to stick his hand in, in your kitchen and you'd appreciate if he didn't. But despite his rudeness, you try to make yourself understand. And you have just about nearly conceded him the point—you are fourteen years older than his daughter. When his daughter was newly born, you had already lost a father, a brother and sister-in-arms, as well as a man you esteemed on a pedestal most high. When his daughter was fourteen, you had lost two lovers and dozens of respected colleagues. The most painful thing she'd lost at that point was her first love.

So even though it _is_ rude, you don't comment on Keisuke's behavior. Because you're being _endearing_. You and Sakura have been married for two months, and although you _had_ thought you'd properly intimidated him at the wedding reception, you apparently didn't. Keisuke is still going strong in his mental campaign against you. Most people gave up after about a week and a half, but this man has lasted _months_. A worthy, if annoying, opponent.

You can easily recall your first conversation with him, a few months after you'd started seeing Sakura (on pain of injury, which you don't think he has quite understood. His wife, your mother-in-law, is one of the sweetest people you've ever met. Whether he likes it or not, Sakura got her temper from Keisuke, not from Sayoko). He'd been gruff, which you still think is hilarious because the man lived like he _didn't_ have _pink_ hair. Luckily your genes have pretty much prevailed against anything which has been thrown at them, if the pictures next to names in your family registry are any evidence. You're confident that if in a few years you and Sakura have a kid, said kid won't be cursed with bubblegum colored hair.

The first thing out of his mouth back then was something along the lines of "If you so much as lay a hand on my daughter without prior written consent of the Fire Daimyo as well as several other high ranking officials as well as myself, so _help_ me…" You had calmly replied that you _had_ _tried_ to keep your hands to yourself, but all you had to show for it was chakra exhaustion, a week in the hospital, and a kick in the head. Literally. The last thing you can remember before waking up in the hospital was Sakura's boot coming at the side of your head—you've never found out, even these two years later, if she ever actually kicked a nearly-unconscious man in the head, but you wouldn't put it past her. Keisuke had glowered, as though he knew you spoke only truth, but didn't want to think about it.

The stainless steel ring on your finger is warm there, no doubt from the stress of talking with Keisuke as well as the small cup of tea which rests innocently in your hand. There could be many metaphors or greater meanings to using steel for your wedding rings, but in truth you and Sakura had just liked the design of them and the look of the highly polished metal. The inside of yours has the date stamped into it, 9.20.637. Other than a repeating pattern of Konoha's abstract leaf symbol on the outside, it is otherwise unadorned. Sakura has the same date stamped inside of hers, except she has henohenomoheji circling the outside of it. It totally wasn't your idea, even though whenever Keisuke catches a glimpse of her ring, he scowls.

He scowls at yours too, although you won't ask him why. Asking him why would imply you're still noticing he has a problem with you. Asking him why isn't _endearing_ , and if it kills you, you are going to be _endearing_ to this old man. Who is only ten years your senior, and is going to be your subordinate on a long diplomatic mission to…wherever Tsunade-sama had said the two of you are going.

* * *

Your daughter and your wife are murmuring in the living room, but you can't bother yourself with following their conversation. Not when you're so filled with fatherly protection instincts that you're probably going to blow a gasket pretty soon. The fact that this _old,_ long, lean, _old_ , deadly, gray-haired, _old_ , usually-masked shinobi across the table from you could even think to defile your sweet, young, tender, gentle flower of a daughter—to go so far as _marrying_ her, forever ruining her prospects of any possible happiness. This _old_ , long, lean, _old_ , deadly, gray-haired, _old_ , usually-masked shinobi just wants her around to cook and clean for him in his _old_ age. Just the thought that your poor Sakura is stuck with such a man makes you want to stick your hand into a blender. Any blender would do, but that one, there on the counter. With it's clear plastic, and it's shiny blades, and the little knobs—just waiting to be flicked 'on.' And then you would blame it on the old man sitting across the table from you. He's fast enough that it could happen. He's not yet lost his agility in his twilight years.

You don't even notice Sayoko coming up at your side, laying a gentle hand on your shoulder, not until she speaks at least. The blender's blades look like they just _might_ be sharper than kunai, and the only way to know would be to test them ou—

"Husband-mine, are you alright?" The doddering old man across from you has your tiny, defenseless daughter on his lap now, and both are looking at you quizzically. Perhaps not the blender, not tonight at least.

"Oh, just fine, dear."

Sakura said to you a few months ago that the bureau in the living room had Kakashi's odd collection of kunai knives in it. In the second drawer, there were ones in the back which were just slightly bent, slightly rusted, slightly dull—those would make much more interesting shapes, wouldn't they? You try to smile and pay attention as your ancient mission leader tries to brief you about the diplomatic mission the Hokage is sending the two of you on. You force down the twinge of betrayal at the thought of the Hokage. She was, after-all, the one supposed to protect your delicate little daughter from ero-Jounin such as this senile, gray-haired, _old_ man who your daughter was somehow coerced into marrying.

Yes, the kunai in the bureau would do wonders for your mind—even just thinking about them makes you happier. And you need to grab up all the happiness you can before this mission— _two months of straight one-on-one time with your new son-in-law._ Kakashi might be ignoring why Tsunade is sending the two of you, just the two of you, on this mission, but _you_ can see what she's up to. She's trying to get the two of you to _bond_. The only reason you won't kill each other is because _you_ can't kill Kakashi—you're simply not _able_ —and it wouldn't fit with Kakashi's act of being endearing and affectionate to his in-laws to randomly murder one of them. And he'd also have to go in for a new psyche-eval' if he did. He'd lose his "Doesn't Kill Teammates Out of Hand," qualifier if he killed you on a mission.

Sometimes you wish he just would, to spare you the grim future you now see stretched before you: his old, lecherous hands pawing all over your innocent little daughter, all day, every day, until the day one of the three of you dies. The fact that they'd still do that even if you did die doesn't comfort you. Some days it traumatizes you more than others.

Perhaps the blender blades _should_ get tested out sooner rather than later…

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You are alone in your grief save for your son-in-law. He is one of _those_ shinobi who disregard people's personal boundaries, so it is no surprise that he's the one to break into your house to sit with you in your misery. Sakura understands and is grieving Sayoko's death, but she is a medic, she knows that life ends. As a shinobi you know that life ends too—but it was never supposed to be your darling wife. You're outside of the whole medic-thing, even though your daughter is one. It makes sense to you that your weird son-in-law is the one to understand your pain.

He doesn't talk to you, he doesn't even look at you most days. He just gets into your house somehow—you stopped trying to keep him out after three days, because he just kept getting in—and finds you and sits next to you. He's as shaken by your wife's death as you are.

You've never asked him, through the years, what happened to his own family because you're just old enough to know what happened to it. He'd never had a mother, and he'd almost had two fathers in the White Fang and in the Yondaime. Sayoko had become his mother, sweet and loving to him, where the Godaime had become his actual mother-in-law—made of a sharp tongue and an angry mind. You and he have never really worked out your own dynamic. You've mostly just let him be after you finally figured out that his interest in your daughter wasn't some ill-conceived mid-life crisis. He's always let you be.

You didn't know that at the beginning, despite your gentle wife's assurances that he indeed was just trying to win you over, but you figured it out after you watched him hold his first son. Your grandson Akihito was about two days old, and you and Sayoko were visiting Sakura in the hospital, to comfort her that her husband was leaving on a mission later that afternoon. Tsunade had been putting off giving him the mission, a simple three-week long reconnaissance mission, to give him the chance to be with Sakura when she had the kid. You had grumped the entire way over to the hospital.

* * *

Your "bonding time" mission several months before had been a success for the village but not for you and your son-in-law. Decades later you don't understand, as Kakashi sits quietly at your kitchen table with you, why he didn't just murder you and play it off as an accident. You had been an _ass_ , and Sayoko had taken one look at you once you'd dragged your weary old bones home and smacked you a good one.

Only the next day at the mission briefing—diplomatic missions worked differently in that a scroll was handed in, and the next day all teammembers reported to their immediate commander for the mission, Tsunade in that case, with all details—Kakashi had been sporting the tiniest limp that indicated his own wife had smacked him as well. His hands were also bandaged, which had struck you as odd. Sayoko had never once explained to you why he'd had those injuries. And now she never was going to.

* * *

At the hospital, Kakashi had been reading over his mission scroll, seated next to Sakura's bed. One of his hands was wrapped around hers, while she held little Akihito. She'd been napping, and hadn't woken up when you and your wife traipsed into the room. Kakashi however had smiled, something which you had learned to tell even with the mask up as it was, and stood. Sayoko had done the polite congratulations on both your parts, but hadn't made a move to lift the infant from his mother's arms.

Kakashi had leaned over your daughter and gently smoothed her hair out of her face—a move so reminiscent to when you had introduced your Sakura to her grandfather Riichirou that you choked on air—waking her enough to let him hold the baby. You were floored, all grumpiness forgotten, at the care the Copy Nin put into his movements. He had made so little noise that Sakura fell right back to sleep, and he'd been so gentle about lifting Akihito up from her arms that the baby hardly twitched.

Sayoko had threatened to feed you crab, to which you have an allergy far worse than Kakashi has spring allergies, later that night for being a grouse for so long about Kakashi. She used to threaten you a lot, little empty threats which were only meant to tease you. It had been better than "I told you so," and you loved her for it.

You still do love her for it, and you know that Kakashi does as well. Without her, the two of you would still hate one another dearly.

* * *

Takara had been the one to break the news to the family, Sayoko couldn't face you even as the news of her last days was brought to you. Your granddaughter said that Grandma was still trying to deal with the news herself, that she hadn't wanted to cry even harder when her family reacted. You were dumbstruck— _you_ were the ninja, _you_ were the one who was supposed to die first. Everyone in the room knew it, everyone in the room knew the statistics. Out of all marriages in Konoha, males died more often, and almost all of those males were shinobi. The average life expectancy of male shinobi in Konoha was forty, therefore you were the one who was supposed to have died, years ago.

It was Kakashi, your son-in-law, who had had to be restrained by his wife. He wanted to know what could be done, what had to be done immediately, why hadn't they known before, wasn't there anything they could _do?_ Absolute power corrupts absolutely, you'd found that day, as everyone had tried to talk Kakashi out of ordering a slew of ANBU medics to the scene. They'd eventually talked him down, which was a relief. Even though he was a former Hokage, as long as his actions weren't corrected by the current on, he was allowed secondary command of the ANBU.

You shudder at the thought of your dear wife being descended upon by those masked strangers. She had been so frightened, and sad, and you had only been able to comfort her during her last few months. Sakura had told you, along with Takara, that there just wasn't a way to keep her alive—her heart was failing her, a heart that had taken it's time to develop a hard-won relationship between you and your daughter's husband.

* * *

"She worried so much when you went out of the village for longterm missions. I don't know which she hated more during the war, when you and Sakura had first gotten married—me leaving on recon missions or you leaving on your S-ranks. If I hadn't talked her out of making me bento boxes when _she and I_ were both newlyweds, she would have snuck them into both your and my packs without our knowing." Your voice is hoarse from the tears you've shed, as well as the ones you've kept inside whenever Kakashi is around. He lets his covered eye cry long enough when he sits with you, you don't need to add to the weep-fest.

Every day the house smells a little less like her and a little more like loneliness, so you're glad that even if it's your ne'er-do-well son-in-law, you're glad he's here. Even if he doesn't choose to respond to the first thing you've said in days.

"I don't know if anyone in the world could be as sweet as her," you murmur, trailing off so that you could better focus on staring at a wall. Your wife is gone, and the only one who understands is your awful son-in-law, and the only one who ever bothered to point out his good deeds, his deep love of your daughter, is gone. Sayoko is really, truly gone. "She was so sweet."

"Yes. Yes she was."


	18. Of Squirrels and Men / S-Ranked Mission: Healing In-House

You have been wearing a mask since you were three or four. Your reasoning back then, thirty years ago, was that Daddy wore a mask, you should wear one too, that way no one would mistake you for anyone else's son. Since then, you have discovered that there are many uses for masks—Nine hundred sixty seven, to be exact—but you've found, as you give your goodbyes to Sakura and Sayoko, the nine hundred and sixty _eighth_. Your mask nicely keeps Keisuke from seeing your expression of dread at the very thought of being forced to act sweet to anyone, or anything, that isn't Sakura. It goes against all of your instincts, and it grates you to the very fabric of your being.

You send a longing thought back to the Hatake family tanto, repaired last Christmas under Sakura's strict orders. It's sitting in the living room on a stand, proudly displayed under a small picture of your father. Even though you had learned to not take it with you—well, been forced, actually, but that's a small detail—on missions, you'd had it sharpened and shined once the blade had been repaired. It is now so very shiny, and so very sharp…

You sigh inwardly. No. A single glance at your newly wedded wife, you remember for her sake you decided that this _disagreement_ between yourself and Keisuke must be ended without bloodshed. This has been more difficult to achieve than you'd first realized, mostly because your life—and the lives of all your colleagues, superiors, and subordinates have been focused on solving problems with the right amount of spattered blood. Hmm. Such a dilemma. Keisuke isn't going to man up and be nice to you because he wants to, you're going to need to find out what to do to make him figure out that you aren't going through a stage of wanting a woman much younger than yourself to make _you_ feel young.

If only you weren't leaving for a mission, you'd take Sakura home and go cuddle with her for several hours to calm your nerves down. But the fact that you're working as Keisuke's partner as he envoys between Konohagakure and Kumogakure isn't going to change, so you simply take what you can from wrapping your arms around your Sakura. You'd still like to go home and cuddle.

By the look Keisuke is giving you, however, you can easily see that he knows exactly what just went through your genius mind. And he looks like he is having none of it. So you go on the offensive.

Your method of retaliation is letting go of Sakura and clapping an arm around his shoulders, beginning to enthuse about the upcoming journey the two of you are embarking on. This is where your stint at teaching Naruto when he was a boy pays off—Students learn from their sensei, but the sensei learns as well. And you have been taking tips in earnest enthusing about things from Naruto. The resulting tangle which ensued was a sight to see as Keisuke tried to disengage himself from you, which only led to both your arms wrapped around your father-in-law as he struggled—in vain—to free himself. He was having none of you fantasizing about your wife—no matter how innocent that fantasy was—and you are having none of him having personal space. Sakura and Sayoko giggle at how "adorable" the two of you are being, and Sakura is so glad that her dad is taking to you finally. Keisuke doesn't pipe up to disagree because you've found a pair of ribs to dig your thumb between—so to keep from losing face, he grins and nods rather than yells and twitches.

You ensure that you keep tight control over him as Sakura steps forward to give you both your goodbye kiss—yours much different than your father-in-law's—her face twisted in a tolerant smirk. She, bless her soul, has understood from the beginning just how hard it has been on you to turn violence into affectionate seeming situations, and she knows you're doing it all for her. Besides, sometimes a child wants to get a little revenge on their parents.

Keisuke's eyes are bugging out hilariously every time the women's eyes aren't focused on him, although you know for a fact that you aren't squeezing him _that_ tightly. As you glance at your father-in-law, tightly controlled as you've got him right now, and beneath your grin and exuberance, that if Keisuke _could_ kill you, if he could kill you _right now_ , he _would._ With this slightly dark realization, you let him go. You take care, however, to keep one arm slung around his scrunched up shoulders, and the two of you head out the gates of the village with Sakura and her mother bidding you both goodbye.

It's not frog-marching if you don't _totally_ pick him up, right?

"I hope your children, if you have any, are absolute demons," he mutters to you, unknowingly cursing the entire line of descendents to be genius shinobi who have a freakish affinity to lightning jutsu, as you let him go a mile later.

* * *

It's the fourth day of traveling and you're feeling good about your progress. You'd planned on dropping your overly affectionate behavior once you were out of sight of the last ANBU squad at the border-but something had told you it would be much better to maintain the act. If you can psyche Keisuke out-make him think for even a second that you actually are sincere-then the entire trip would fall on the "win" side of the line.

You typically make good conversation when the two of you stop for the night each day. You don't make light conversation, or stilted conversation, you make good conversation. You talk about happy things and sad things, and the fun things you've done with Sakura and what you miss about being away from her and from home. You don't mention the _fun_ fun things to him, he might have a stroke the poor man. He probably still thinks his daughter, a doctor, doesn't know what makes babies.

Keisuke, as has become tradition in the last few days, rarely answers, only glowers at you from across the small fire. You don't let it faze you, making up excuses for his silence. Either excuses that involve his own sour temper or the things around the two of you that distract you.

Tonight's excuse is the squirrel attempting to bury nuts in your father-in-law's bedding. He probably hasn't noticed it—either that or is purposely ignoring it in favor of having a reason to be in an even sourer mood later on—but it's kept you amused for at least the last half hour. And by amused, it must be understood that you haven't contemplated murdering your wife's father in a fit of frustration. _Doesn't kill teammates out of hand_ —damn that coveted qualifier, what you've had since you were ten. Damn Keisuke for making you want the lower-ranking _Doesn't kill teammates out of hand very often_.

The man could simply say what's on his mind, what's going on in that pink-haired head of his. It's not as though this trip is going to go by any faster—and he could use this time to vent, to tell you exactly what he thinks of you without the grim prospect of a night on the couch (a punishment from his wife. Sayoko, while not where Sakura got her temper, is not as sweet to Keisuke as she lets on) or one hell of a black eye (a punishment from your wife, his daughter).

Or, if he doesn't want to go through the therapeutic venting at the root of his frustration, he could be civil to you. Instead of, well, trying to look ominous as he sharpens his weapons. Emphasis on "trying to."

It was because he's using a crap technique from at least a dozen years ago to sharpen his kunai that you turned your attention to the squirrel in the first place. You don't go so far as to grit your teeth at his little show of bravado, but it does annoy you. He's a Chuunin, and not even one who tried to take the Jounin promotion exam and failed. He was promoted and never tried any harder than that. You don't judge him for his life choices, every shinobi is different in what they want to do for their village and how they want to do it. It's that he's trying to _subtly_ intimidate you by going through his weapons pouch and liberally using his whetstone on his kunai and shuriken…it's actually kind of adorably pathetic.

The squirrel is just making progress in ripping through the outer layer of Keisuke's sleeping bag when you hear him clear his throat to speak. Your eye flicks over to him, taking in the repacked weapons pouch, the whetstone having disappeared into his pack somewhere, his short cropped pink hair laying docile on his head, his green eyes cast down at his lap.

You sit crosslegged, expecting—a little, not a big expectation, but a little one—his confession that you really aren't a horrible person after all, that he doesn't hate you quite so much anymore. Anything but what comes out of his mouth.

"Kakashi, while you've been watching that squirrel over on my pack, his buddy's been crapping in your sleeping bag." You frown, the Chuunin is totally pulling your leg, but you check anyway. Almost an exact copy of the squirrel molesting Keisuke's things is _relieving_ itself at the head of your bag.

"So you let a small rodent crap in your teamleader's sleeping bag?" Sakura's father pauses, considering how he'll answer your question.

"Well, you were going to let a small rodent leave food and other assorted things inside of your mission partner's sleeping bag. As soon as you pointed out this guy, I was going to point out that guy."

Well. Crap. Literally.

And this mission was just starting to turn around and look like it was going to be good for the two of you. It's another day and a half to Kumogakure to meet with the Raikage. Damn.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

You and your mom are a lot alike—you've got big hearts, you've got pink hair, you're amazing at chakra control, the list goes on. Where you differ is that Mom works at the hospital still, and you only come in by appointment. It's not that you're being snobbish about your skills and who gets them, it's that the rest of your family needs so many home-repairs that you're on a semi-permanent S-class mission from the Nanadaime to take care of them. It's S-class, so you can't tell anyone about it, not even your mom and dad, so you feel like you're a little kid again pulling one over on your parents.

Your week usually starts with Takeo or Riichirou, because they are more specialized for particular missions and are sent out and return more often than Akihito. Your younger siblings rarely leave the village, so they get low-priority for their injuries unless they're truly grievous.

If it's Takeo, your younger twin—and you really don't rub it in, honest!—you blackmail him into doing your few chores around the house in exchange for your services as the family medic. He doesn't know you've been ordered to patch him up, but what he doesn't know can't hurt you and it gets the trash taken out. He rarely comes home _injured_ anymore, at eighteen he's getting more agile every day, but Mom worries about her first pink haired boy—so you often will spend an hour healing bruising and closing up cuts and minor lacerations.

Riichirou is often dragged in by his current boyfriend, Fumihiko. Your seventeen year old brother makes manly bedroom eyes at "Fumi," and it's all you can do to prevent yourself from gagging. You are going to set him up with _someone_ soon, and you're going to damn well get rid of "Fumi," and his crazy eyes that don't zero in on your brother—Riichirou isn't the pink haired Hatake son that Fumihiko _wants_. You and your mom often stay up late making plans—you've got a list going between you of the self-identified bi and homosexual shinobi in Rii-kun's age group, and your mom may or may not have broken into Shizune-sensei's hospital records room to get that information. And you may or may not have stood watch for her.

Your dad is another deal entirely—he probably has you figured out, and you don't know what kind of trick he's going to pull to blackmail you in exchange for his silence on the matter to your mother. She has always said that just because there are three and a half capable medics in the family does _not_ exempt any of the Hatakes from going to the hospital. What you're doing is family treason, in a sense. Your mom has spent her entire adult life trying to get geezers like Dad to go to the hospital rather than going home and suturing their wounds themselves. Dad can usually whine and get her to heal him, but she will whine all the way through while he grins. When she _won't_ or is at the hospital, your dad goes to you because he knows he can get more free healthcare. Not that he needs all that much usually. As a retired Hokage he doesn't get sent on many missions other than being assigned in-village ones to meet with diplomats when the Nanadaime is otherwise engaged. But there is always a very dangerous, very secret— _very_ secret, Mom is a very neurotic woman when it comes to your dad's health—mission which only someone like the Nanadaime or the Rokudaime could complete.

And those are the ones no one likes to tell Mom about. Last month she threw an ANBU operative out of the panoramic windows of the Hokage Tower. A bit over a year ago, shortly after Dad retired, she almost made good on threats to break Dad's leg to keep him home and safe. Dad debates with you sometimes what constitutes "safe" these days if the one person in the village who could really hurt him is his wife. You try not to take sides.

On top of your own S-rank, you have to patch your father up faster than anyone else who comes whining to you after Mom says to go to the hospital. Mom literally can't know about some of the missions Dad comes back from, and it's best if he's only bruised and a little battered rather than bleeding from a dozen gashes. Or having random weapons sticking out of his person.

A lot like Akihito. Your oldest brothers, Masato and Akihito, go out on longterm missions, often together, and just about the only thing they never treat on one another is the condition of having a shuriken or a kunai sticking out of their leg or butt cheek. There have been odder places to leave a weapon, but with all the tumbles and rolls they use in combat, your brothers are a couple pieces of work. One or the other of them is going to lose an eye with how they fight, if they're getting knives embedded so deeply in their skin that they wait until they get home to get the weapon out. Akihito is a decent field medic, so neither has ever come home in serious danger of an infection or anything. It's just…

You look up at the rat-a-tat-tat-tat-a-tat of Akihito's knock. And there stands your older brother, who, at twenty two, is far more of a child than your youngest brother Minoru. He has a boyish set to his dark eyes, and a lazy grin on his pasty lower face, his shoulders are slumped just like Dad's, but at least he's standing up mostly straight, and _holy— you didn't know Shuriken could go places like that—_!

He has three shuriken embedded one by one down his thigh, settled so deeply they must be touching bone—and Masato is nowhere in sight which means that this wasn't from a mission but from a spar. If your brother were dead, Akihito would have a face straighter than Dad's on his visits to the Memorial Stone. Because Akihito looks like the prankster who pranked ANBU, you can instantly deduce where he got his injuries.

It's simple to stabilize the wounded area and gently work the spinning knives out of your brother's skin, and he knows enough about house treason to not make any sounds of pain as you work. The only person allowed to commit house treason is Mom, because she made up the rule and none of her three medically trained children has ever gotten up the courage to break it openly. Akihito because he isn't good enough to heal away even the marks of healing, you because you're on an S-rank to _commit_ house treason secretly in the name of keeping the Rokudaime's family safe, and also because you're not _that_ stupid, and Hoshimi because while she can heal pretty well, she doesn't like to do it unassisted yet.

The operation on your brother's leg, as well as healing his many bruises, lacerations, and even minor scrapes, is successful and only takes an hour and a half. You and your brother had chatted about life, the hospital, your parents being completely nuts, as well as Akihito's fear that the Nanadaime is going to assign him a Genin team and that he's not sure he's really mature enough to teach. You tell him to go talk to Dad about it, but he thinks that's weird—Dad didn't mean to, but he eventually found a wife out of his original Genin trainees. It gives Akihito the willies, willies which will no doubt get worse in time: every year more and more kunoichi are graduating from the Academy—more and more girls on Genin teams, more and more of them growing up.

Mom, Shizune-sensei, and Tsunade-baa-chan have taught you that your bedside manner is the calmest out of all medics they've ever trained. You _know_ that if Mom were allowed to know about your mission to heal your family members, she'd be proud. Your brothers, and occasionally younger sister, never even feel the need to glance at their injuries as you work. They never tense up, and they rarely look like they want to howl in pain. You are a damn good medic, and you sometimes wish that your Mom would be allowed to know about it.

* * *

 

You mask your chakra when you come into the house, mostly to try and surprise Kakashi—which rarely works, he says you mask too much of it, that you don't feel like a civilian, and that it's good you don't go on combat missions fighting S-class criminals anymore. The new generation of S-class guys are way too good for the likes of the two of you old people. You usually don't have to heal any broken bones from how hard you punch his arm, but once in a while he isn't prepared for the blow and something cracks. Nothing ever shatters, you're not a _monster._

The first time you detected your pink haired daughter healing in the house, you almost felt like being a monster—raining down your wrath at her breaking the rule of "Go to the hospital, not home." But then you kept yourself in check, to investigate what was exactly going on. Takara isn't loose with her life, doesn't break promises easily, and wouldn't benefit from a lecture about the rules. She knows the rules, which brings about your question: why is she breaking them?

From what you could read from her chakra patterns and those of little Minoru's—well, to him fourteen was most certainly not little, but you're his mother you'll call him what you want—the kid had broken his wrist. Probably trying to learn a new tumble from Riichirou, but you'll never know. Just reading your daughter's chakra signature, figuring out what she was up to, brought tears to your eyes that first time. She is a damn good medic, and you're glad to know it.

This newest was probably a knife wound, from what you can read as you stand outside of Takara's closed door, and you can hear the codewords for what is going on. She never lets on in conversation that she's healing, but you've been listening in to her healing sessions whenever you can recently so you can hear the coded "can you feel your toes?" and "Now you're going to be put on a weeklong rest break so that your muscles can heal. Come back tomorrow for some therapy." She never actually says these things, but you can hear them.

If only your little girl would just heal someone out in the open, you could stop spying on her and praise her efforts openly. You want your little girl, your own spitting image save for her dark Kakashi eyes, to know that you're damn proud of her.


	19. Challenge 572 / Clan Colors

You detest rat catching. Which is why you're on your way to find Kakashi—if you issue rat catching as a challenge, this D-rank will go _so_ much quicker. What you _did_ to Tsunade you'll never know, whatever it was to earn rat catching it must have been rather heinous. Having a genius super-ninja as your best friend paid off in situations such as these—Kakashi will never know how many D-rank's he's helped you finish over the years. Not every one of them is a D-rank, but the most horrible ones—like testing out the then-recently opened tempura stand on Main and Hana, a mission assigned by the Sandaime himself—were never borne alone.

You reimburse him in your own way—after-all, the man has enough on his plate without doing unpaid missions. You're not sure how you'll pay him back yet, but you'll figure it out. The fact that you've been doing this for over ten years to him makes you surprised that you can still surprise him, and inspires a deep respect for the man's patient streak. Most people who surprised or spooked or annoyed the Copy Nin met their chosen maker shortly thereafter, and those who survived were often raving lunatics or highly jaded subordinate comrade shinobi.

You firmly believe that you fall into neither survivors' camp—you alone are strong enough to surprise, spook, _and_ annoy the famous Sharingan no Kakashi. You don't get enough respect for it, but you don't do it for respect, you do it to stay at top performance. As long as you can get one over on Kakashi once in a while, you're still good enough to be in this business.

The silver haired Jounin is sitting cross-legged high in a tree near the hospital, pondering a list in his hands. You've been stalking this man since you were five or so, and you know him well enough to know that he is far too much of a genius to deign to use _lists_ of all things to remember his schedules. You take half a moment to admire the broad shoulders of your comrade, as well as the hands which you held nearly constantly when he was thirteen—someone had to keep him from ripping his Sharingan out, and no one save Yondaime could get close to him without losing a hand. One of the medics had been nearly forced to retire when you'd been just a moment too slow in grabbing for his lightning fast attack.

You only take half a moment to admire him, however, because very suddenly a Tsunade with pink hair pops into your mind, her fists glowing green and blue—one a vicious tenderizer and one an invisible but highly _real_ cleaver. You don't need to fantasize about him anyway—that shy Academy sensei, Izuna or Iruka or something, has been making eyes at you for at least a month now at the missions desk. It's time to move on, but not before you find out what has your Eternal Rival so thoroughly engaged.

* * *

 

Your father proposed to your mother in a letter. You never met her, so you don't remember any frustrated mutterings but nor do you remember any loving sighs. You just remember your father mentioning it when you wondered to him what you should write to him in letters home if you were assigned to a foreign post. You'd been almost seven at the time, a right little Chuunin who understood the world of being an adult. He'd said you would find your voice, that you would find the time to tell or ask him anything. At your questioning look, he'd smiled and ruffled your hair, telling you softly of how he proposed in a letter.

"It went something along the lines of, 'I'm going to return to Konoha on December 13th, and would be obliged if you were to agree to marry me, and I would be doubly so obliged if you were to agree to a Christmas wedding.' She hit me when I got home, but had already made the plans and invited her horrific mother and father. I do not advise this method to you, Kakashi." There had been a serious glint in your father's eye and you'd taken him at his word. Do not lightly play with the sometimes ridiculous romantic leanings of Konoha kunoichi.

You don't plan to ever forget his advice, most particularly when the woman you're courting is one of the few people you seriously believe could easily do you a spectacular harm if she put her mind to it.

* * *

 

You rarely use clones because your usual sparring partner can kind of, sort of, _see through them_. But when Kakashi is being lazy around you and has his headband plunked over one eye, _then_ you sometimes consider using them. Like just now, tapping him on the shoulder with one clone, trying to take his book with another, and then snatching the paper away from him yourself. You of course save the most dangerous one for you, you aren't a shinobi who uses clones to ascertain what is going on or what-have-you with a battle. You just go for it.

_Down on one knee, flowers, ring Stupid._

_Write a letter and pass it off as family tradition Dumb._

_Casual, during lunch or breakfast_

_Formal, after dinner_

_On a mission with her Suicidal_ You note that this one has multiple strike-throughs.

_When she's at work doing desk duty_

_Have Tsunade pretend she's ordering it_

_Have Tsunade order it_

_Take her on vacation, propose at sunset on a beach_ This one was barely legible, but there was a note below it— _Too much what Gai would do_. Well, you would—wait, that's a really good idea! There would be flowers, and birds, and the sun would be going down in a glorious haze!—and Kakashi didn't want to use this idea? Your friend must be mad, without control of his mental faculties, his reason gone out the window.

He's lucky you're such a good friend who won't tell the Hokage about this unless you can see it affecting his work. How shinobi deal with life between missions was their own business. You choose to stalk the Copy Nin, that one Academy sensei—Idate, that must be his name!—Or something—stalks you (which is highly flattering, it's been years since someone followed you around), why Sakura stalked Kakashi. And now he wanted to propose to her—it gives you hope, frankly. If Sakura can be so successful as to trick Kakashi into proposing, then you might be able to trick that Academy sensei into more than the casual dinner-date he is probably thinking of when he moons over you when you walk into a room.

And then in a few years you're going to steal Kakashi's idea from him—just like he has stolen countless jutsu from you—and use it on that kind Chuunin.

But for now you're going to run like hell, because you just stole something from the Copy Nin. You run the thought through your head again—you, _Maito Gai_ , just stole, _as in taken without permission or warning_ , something, _as in a list of proposal ideas_ , from the Copy Nin, _as in one of the deadliest and trickiest shinobi to ever live_. If you don't find somewhere to hide soon, you are soon going to be added to the memorial stone while attempting to carry out a D-rank mission of rat catching.

You start looking for a handy open window.

* * *

 

You aren't that worried after Gai steals your list—you memorized it just after dawn, you're just trying to totally calm yourself down enough to walk into the hospital— _full of death, Rin caught up in the crush in the ER, Genin and Chuunin screaming_ —to ask your girlfriend— _sweet kisses, love and warmth, strength both inner and outer, teaching a Genin team how to function as shinobi during peacetime_ —to marry you. _To live together, love together, have a family together_ —You take a deep breath, you can do this. Just one step at a time.

* * *

 

You lost Kakashi three street turns ago, but that doesn't comfort you. The Copy Nin is easiest fought when he can be seen, and he _knows_ it. So you abandon the idea of a handy _open_ window, and you wrench open a shuttered window and drop into the apartment. The window was apparently the bedroom one, which is why it was shut so tightly against the light at this hour of the day on a Saturday, and the bed of said bedroom was directly where you landed. Aforementioned bed was occupied by a rather surprised, rather tanned, rather scarred Chuunin, who rather looked like he was enjoying a late morning of no Academy classes.

Well now, this is handy.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

The hoari isn't made of fine silk, but it's not made of cheap silk either. Somewhere in-between. The red circle with the white center wraps around the shoulder of the garment, with several other circles of varying sizes joining it on the front and back. It's pure white otherwise.

"Sakura, white's…white's not a good color…" Your father's half-sleeved kimono had been white, except for red triangles edging the collar and sleeve hems. You've never told her that, because it's never come up. Maybe it should have, you think, as her shoulders fall. Rather than let her jump to conclusions, however, you take the piece of clothing from her hands and smooth it over your lap, looking at the reverse of the Haruno clan design. You're being adopted in whether or not you put your name on their family koseki or not, and it warms your heart in a weird way.

"My father wore a white and red kimono top, with one sleeve cut short and the other removed at the shoulder. There were red triangles here, and here," you rub your thumb over the sleeve and point also to the collar.

"Tsunade-sama says it was the clan way of doing things. I never knew, there was only my father and I." You smile the slightest bit, giving into impulse. "It's not like I'm giving up anything, Sakura." Her face is still apprehensive so you reach out to her and bring her close, taking care to slide the silk garment next to you on the couch rather than crush it between you. With your forehead against hers, you sigh, letting your shoulders go slack as you relax.

"But the white—"

"—is fine. And it's white and red, my father would be proud."

She doesn't look happy, but she settles down and that is really what you wanted from her. Well, you want a lot more from her than settling, but that will all come in it's own time. It didn't take a near-death experience to convince you that you needed to marry your girlfriend. All it took was seeing Sai's comatose body carted back to Konoha on Naruto's back. Sasuke had gotten into the young man's head and mucked around in there, and the Uchiha had escaped before Naruto could give him retribution.

Sai's girlfriend, Temari, had arrived a week later from Sand. You had been the one to meet her at the gate and take her to Sai's hospital room. The former ROOT agent had been groggy still from his forced nap, but that hadn't stopped Temari from launching into a tirade about staying away from the crazy Uchiha kid. You hadn't been able to leave the room, you were instructed to stay with Temari until she had a chance to report to the Hokage. You stood your ground, pointedly looking away from the happy reunion. Tsunade had found out a few years ago that Temari could stand to be around Sai, because he was so socially lacking that he made few missteps, and those he did make were easily dismissed as social retardation. The Hokage had quickly changed Temari's usual escort from Shikamaru to Sai, and things had run even smoother than before.

But the two of them reacting to a near-death situation, to watch what went on, convinced you that it was high time you married Sakura. Neither of you are going to live forever, and it was damned difficult to get inheritances transferred to "long-time partners" in Konoha unless there was a kid involved—you don't want to leave Sakura with nothing if you never come home.

You'd proposed two weeks after Temari had forcibly dragged Sai to Sunagakure, with a letter of dispensation from the Hokage for the pale ink-user to live full-time as a Konoha shinobi working for Sand. Tsunade had irritably remarked that the boy had better come home after a year with a "goddamn tan and some goddamn social skills." You don't think he'll come back with the second, because he's going to be living with the Kazekage's brash sister, having daily dealings with the Kazekage as well as Suna's resident puppet master, and none of those three young people are prime examples of "social skills."

So although it had taken a great deal of your nerve to walk through the hospital doors (which you rarely did, typically you were UOA, unconscious on arrival), and even more of your iron will to meander through the corridors to Sakura's office, you had done it.

* * *

 

"Sakura?" she was eating a celery stick while trying to fill out charts, so she looked hilarious when she turned around to see you. Your hands were firmly in your pockets to keep from fidgeting— _there must be seven other people in this room, four of them are—_ and you rested your weight on one hip so that you didn't lock your knees— _watching you, one is eavesdropping, two are trying to ignore that this is hap—_ and you deliberately loosened your shoulders to minimize showing how tense you were— _pening, and she's_ looking _at you_.

"Yeah? I thought I told you I get off at four today, you're early for once in your life. Unless this is just being so late you're early?" You chuckled with her before starting your tactical maneuver. There were too many people for you to just grab her and ask her in private, and there were too few to hope that their conversations and noise would ensure privacy.

"No, just something I need to clear up before I go beg Iruka for an evening off," her eyes sparkled, and for a half second you considered doing the normal civilian way of doing this, of taking her out to dinner and asking her when the lights were low and she had the luxury to dress up. But that would bring on a panic attack of some sort, and so you continued as planned.

"I," your throat instantly felt like it was going to close up, but you pressed on. If you could only spit it out then things would settle down somehow, "I want to ask you to marry me, I want to marry you, Sakura. I don't want to hem and haw about it, either. We've been dating for two years, and I want us to have something more permanent than that." Your heart was pounding initially, but by the time you finished speaking it had calmed down. Your head felt light and your fingers were twitching so badly that no amount of control could keep them from their spasms.

The hysteric!Kakashi locked away deep inside of you had a stunning moment of lucidity as he pointed out to you that your girlfriend still had her celery hanging from her mouth. That moment of calm was all Sakura needed to shoot up from her seat and grab you around the middle, laughter filling the office and the scent of tears spiking the air. Your hysteric side watched idly as the celery fell, while the rest of you noted that she'd gotten your mask down and that her kisses tasted like the slightly bitter vegetable.

* * *

 

Your mother-in-law taught you how to knit shortly before your first son, Akihito, was born. Sakura was due in just over a month, and you'd only gotten back two months ago. Sayoko commented that you had even more nervous energy than Keisuke had had before he'd become a father, and she volunteered to teach you the repetitive hobby to numb your mind. You used the Sharingan to copy her movements on two hundred consecutive stitches, but on the one hundred and seventy sixth, she had dropped a stitch. You still can't, to this day, knit anything without making that same mistake, endlessly on every cycle of two hundred stitches.

The first thing you knitted was a baby blanket. It was a creamy off-white with a maroon circle in the center. It was three feet by four feet, and it took you four days. Tsunade was keeping you off foreign missions for the time being because you were in no fit mental state to lead a team against any sort of enemy resistance, and you had no one to spar against. So you knitted.

Like a mad-man.

Sakura just smiled indulgently at you as you would zone out in the living room, hands quicker and quicker as the movements became natural. Just like any jutsu, copied or not, practice made perfect. Well, except for the dropped stitches, one in every two hundred. And as you did this, you drifted mentally. Your father had said few words about the clan, and when he had there had been a strange look on his face—wistfulness, and old pain. You'd never questioned him about if the two of you had any known relatives, Sakumo kept his loved ones close enough that if there were any relatives they were no friends to Hatake Sakumo. When you'd gotten older, Sensei had told you that your father's oddly cut kimono was the Hatake tradition concerning the clan head. He hadn't said anything about whether or not _you_ should wear a shirt of the same cut.

You had chosen not to wear it out of shame before Obito's death. After Obito's death, you still felt shame at the thought of claiming that garment as your own—because you were not half the man that Sakumo was. What you endured was nothing compared to what he endured. Eventually you started to think less on "claiming" your position as clan head on the Konoha family register, because you would need children for your clan to come of anything. But then Sakura came along, and changed everything.

She loved you randomly, without any cause or reason. She didn't demand to know the drama of your past or of your conflicts, she just demanded you. All thoughts of your own dead clan—there was no twinge of grief at the thought, you'd never known them—had been shoved aside in favor of _living_.

It had all come crashing back to you in an awkwardly happy moment when she draped a white silk shirt into your hands. The momentary flash of red clashing against white had startled the memories of your father's diamond patterned kimono into your mind. But Sakumo had truly been the last of the old Hatake clan, you'd realized in that moment. You know none of the reported secret jutsu of the Hatake family, and you know none of the traditions. Your father never raised you up as a Hatake, so when he died he left you with the task of rebuilding from the ground up.

So rather than continue on with a jagged pattern for a jagged path marked with blood, you chose to take the reverse of Sakura's family crest. You figured, as you steadily churned out the white and red blanket for your first child, that a circle—something unbroken—was the best thing to start with for your tiny family.


	20. And Baby Makes Nine / Not Called a Genius for Nothing

"You have to sleep some time, Kakashi. I'm not going to disappear if you close both of your eyes at once." You startle at Sakura's voice through the darkened room, lit just barely by starlight, and your right eye pops open. The strange stereoscope of looking through a regular eye and a Sharingan is disorienting but you manage to cobble together an answer.

"I know. I'm not worried about you, I just want to look at you forever. I would toss all of this Hokage business out the window in an instant if I thought Naruto could immediately take over. But he can't, so I'll watch you some more before I go back to the Tower to finish up my paperwork. Hinata is watching the kids." She sighs in understanding, and you hear the slide of sheets as she brings up her hand into the air so you can grab hold of it. Your Sakura is in the hospital, and you blame it on yourself—after all, she was hurt while delivering _your_ child to the world.

* * *

 

You spoke with your father when you were briefly dead, fifteen years ago now. The village had been leveled, and you had just sacrificed your life for the lives of two comrades. It had been a good way to go, the way you'd always thought you would go—in battle, protecting the lives of others. Like Obito, and Sensei, and Rin. There were many things you had never accomplished in your life, back then, but they paled in comparison to what you had given it for. Saving Chouji at the sacrifice of your own life had been, then, as close as you would come to being a father.

And for the next five years of your life after Nagato had revived you, you had been kind of fine with that. You understood the sentiment of giving everything for the lives of others—it was becoming a family trait, because Sakumo had given everything to save his teammates, and your grandfather had done something along those same lines. Well, your suspected grandfather. Sakumo had been found as an infant in a field, which was why he was given the surname Hatake.

And then you had come home from a mentally grueling diplomatic mission with your father-in-law to find your darling wife six months pregnant. It had been quite the sucker punch, and you still sometimes look at your eight year old son Akihito and have your breath taken away. All of your children were so small and fragile as newborns, and you had changed as a man as you helped them grow. Children were warm, and you suddenly understood why the Hyuuga family and the Aburame family had so many children despite how cold they seemed—if you were Hyuuga Hiashi you would probably do anything to bring a little warmth into your life.

But you aren't. You're Hatake Kakashi, Rokudaime Hokage, husband to Hatake Sakura, and father to now seven children.

The injuries the medic (now fired and packed off to a _very_ foreign outpost with only the written authorization to recommend how to apply bandaids) inflicted on Sakura left her quietly recovering in the hospital for two months. Tsunade emphasized very strongly to you that unless you wanted her to disturb the subtle chakra-nurture between Sakura and little Minoru, she could do little other than help Sakura heal naturally. As she healed and as Minoru's chakra was developed enough to "zap" back at foreign chakra, Tsunade could do more, but early on she had been relatively powerless. You had been furious, delirious with an anger which had seldom shown itself through your life, at the situation careless medical practices had forced your family into.

Once Minoru's chakra network was fully formed—not disciplined, but at least formed—Tsunade had agreed to heal Sakura quickly and allow the two of you to go home finally. The six older kids were finally allowed to see their new younger brother, and to their varying ages they were all excited.

* * *

 

Sakura is sitting in the rocking chair, surrounded by blankets and pillows, holding the fragile newborn so that your other kids can see him. Minoru is a sleepy baby, which you feel is a blessing compared to some of the others (Akihito was walking at ten months, excitable and crawling much earlier; the twins you swear to this day ran a racket against you putting them to sleep for naps, with one regularly waking up the other; and Hoshimi has only in the past few months learned to sleep through a proper night). So although his six elder siblings are making enough noise to wake the dead, Minoru is dozing through it as though it were as silent as a Zen garden.

Hoshimi is staring with huge eyes at the baby, sucking on one of her fists in an idle habit you've tried your best to curb, and she is still where you sat her across Sakura's lap from Minoru. Her silver hair is sticking up and out like a little ball of lightning, a little silver Chidori of a mop of Hatake hair. Her bright black eyes are fixed suspiciously on the infant across from her.

Your pink haired children, youngest to eldest, are crowded up around Sakura's knees. Riichirou is shoved up front, perched between Sakura's knees as Takara and Takeo flank him. Riichirou is only two and a half, and his chubby hands grasp for purchase against the blanket on your wife's lap. The twins, to your great amusement, are helping him to keep from swaying with the aid of their almost-four year old heights.

Masato and Akihito are tucked in close against the left side of the rocking chair, surveying their brother with all the disinterest of seven and eight year old boys who don't have time to worry about babysitting their youngest sibling. You make a mental note to watch those two closely as they grow up, they don't treat one another with the love you expect them to—not only as their father but as their commanding officer. Well, Akihito's commanding officer, as Masato has yet to graduate from the Academy.

You kneel at Sakura's right, marveling at the feeling that you are a father to these children—unmistakably in most of them—and being humbled by the fact that this moment feels no different than when you first held Akihito. More than any other life you have ever been responsible for, you had literally held the life of your son in your arms. More than a Genin trainee depended on their Jounin sensei, your children depended on you for their very lives for _years_ on end.

The deep empathy and courage of the Third and of the Fourth become ever more stark as you helped your sons and daughter—Hoshimi is a little too young, but Takara is old enough—to learn to discipline and control chakra, to throw kunai properly. Those men were fathers and as such they took their job as Hokage seriously because they understood the nature of it. Tsunade found children later on in life who she could mentor, such as Sakura and Ino, but her wisdom seemed more calculating than that of her predecessors. Because you have held each of these tiny lives in your arms and rocked them to sleep, fed them, held their hand as they learned to walk, shown them how to write their letters, you understand the village so much more deeply. You understand the struggle of shinobi parents, trying to teach their children while providing for them. You understand, to some extent, the struggle of civilian parents allowing their children into the Academy.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

Your husband is a smart man—he clues in quick to the tiniest of cues. It's why he's not dead, but rather a healthy just-turned-thirty-five. He has taken you out to dinner for your anniversary—somehow pulling heartstrings in both your mother _and_ father to get them to watch Akihito (who at two months seems to be just as winning to your mother as Kakashi is)—and it's just now that he's noticed you haven't touched the sake saucer next to your bowl. You just reached across the table to fill his second, and only seeing your already full cup had stayed his hand in trying to reciprocate the gesture.

His mask is down so you see the tiniest tic of a frown form before he smoothes it away and picks up his sake. The half-smile on his face shows all over it, despite his hair flopping into his eyes and the drawn lines of too many ANBU missions curving their way around his mouth and his eyes. He's only got one eye open, despite foregoing his headband for the evening, and he's gazing into the tiny reflection in his sake cup. You can almost see the gears chugging away in his mind.

"You know, this doesn't feel quite like the sucker punch surprise I had coming home to hear about Aki." You giggle at that—poor Kakashi destroyed an entire training ground reacting to that 'surprise,' and you had had to have Ino mend two broken knuckles and some extremely deep bruising on him. This time around he's going to have more time to get used to the idea of a baby, not just a spare three months with a very excitable kunoichi waddling around his home. You weren't an irritable pregnant lady, you were just _excitable_. You'd like the world to remember there is a difference—Sabaku no Temari, forced to stay in Konoha for the past four months after Sai discovered he'd gotten his girlfriend pregnant, is an _irritable_ pregnant lady.

Irritable is even a nice word when contrasted with the reality that is Temari the last time you saw her. She was marching down the main street towards the hospital, Sai tucked under her arm in a headlock, being trailed uncertainly by her brothers, one of whom was the visiting Kazekage. Kankuro was rubbing at his neck in a manner that all but screamed that Sai had just taken one for the team and traded places with the puppet master. Probably by lying—a social skill he had taken to quickly after spending almost a year in Suna with the Sand Siblings. At least he had one of the notorious decrees fulfilled, as it appeared he had taken up wearing traditional Suna attire and _hadn't_ gained a tan. He has, however, managed to reproduce, and a longstanding bet between you and Kiba has been settled—he won.

"Speaking of surprises, when did you know?" Kakashi has only sipped at half his sake rather than downing it all in one motion. He sets the dish down a little closer to his edge of the table to deter you from filling it again.

You glance up at him and quickly away to the rest of the restaurant he picked. The two of you are sitting farthest from the door, which Kakashi's back is to, and very few of the other guests even know that you are here. This anonymity is exactly why his mask is down rather than up at the moment.

"A few days before you came back from your mission last week," you murmur, staring at his shoulder rather than his—now incredulous—face. He knows Tsunade's rules as well as you do concerning certain topics, and he also knows that you helped Tsunade patch him together from injuries and severe poisoning. Tsunade doesn't let lovers work on lovers, and not just because she went through the trauma of being unable to save her own lover decades ago. Lovers sometimes just lost the ability to think clearly, pushing themselves to the point of death to save their patient. Other times, especially in the case of kunoichi medics, that life wasn't their own but that of a weeks old embryo. If you were less jaded, or more of a mother and less of a warrior, _something_ other than the woman Kakashi married, you would be crying right now—bawling. But you aren't, because you're Hatake Sakura, the Copy Nin's wife. This doesn't stop Kakashi's reaction which is to take a calming breath as his brows pinch together.

"Kakashi, I would rather have you alive than sacrifice your life for what might have just been a scare—you remember the one I had about a year after we started going out, right? The one where I just hadn't had enough vitamins after a long stretch of hard work, and I was late because of that." You neglect to mention to him that the difference between then and a week ago was that when you were nineteen you didn't know how to conduct a double-chakra signature scan, and now you do. You knew when you scrubbed in for surgery that you were doing so at the risk of an innocent's life.

Your words placate him, and you are once again glad that because you're a medic there are very few records out on you. Most of your medical records are stored inside your head, because you are your own doctor. He won't ever be able to find out your white lie.

* * *

 

As teamleader of the mission which accidentally recovered Uchiha Sasuke, you have to report to all of the hearings of his trial. You have been asked to stand as a witness for both sides, providing honest testimony of what you have seen and read about the Uchiha since he abandoned Konoha. You try your best to stand up straight and not slouch, but you have an ANBU mission almost twice or three times a week these days trying to deter missing nin from attacking Konoha, and on top of that you have a months old son at home to take care of in an effort to lift some of the burden from your wife. You're used to barely sleeping, but that doesn't take away from the fact that you're barely sleeping.

"You state in your mission report," oh this again, "that you instructed the main members of what is typically Team Kakashi—one Uzumaki Naruto, and two current rotation ANBU members publically codenamed Sai and Yamato, all of Jounin rank—to 'seize and disable' one Uchiha Sasuke if he were to be apprehended." They asked this last week…can't they keep it straight anymore, you wonder.

"Why is it that you ordered such treatment of the last surviving member of one of Konoha's most famous clans?" oh, the defense is asking. You don't let on how put-upon you're feeling, not in your voice or your expression.

"As I have stated previously while under oath in this investigation, the order to seize and disable was given after much deliberation on my part. The court would be surprised, if it has forgotten, to know that I am one of the last teamleaders of any rank to give such an order. Only about two Chuunin teamleaders are after me in submitting such an order to their teams. If _why_ such an order was given to my subordinates then becomes the question, the court will turn it's attention to the fact that Uchiha Sasuke has been a missing nin from Konoha for a little more than a decade." You pause, taking a deep breath and readjusting your posture.

"On top of that, there is another reason for submitting the order: three years ago, Uchiha Sasuke attempted to murder the Yondaime Raikage as he travelled to Konoha for a meeting with the Godaime Hokage. Because of this, the Yondaime Raikage had him condemned as an international criminal and the name and face of Uchiha Sasuke has appeared in all five of the great villages' Bingo Books. To better some rocky international relations, all teams from Konoha starting two years ago were encouraged to adopt a seize and disable order concerning _any_ Uchiha." You wonder sometimes, sneaking a glance at the blindfolded and heavily restrained Sasuke, if your former student has any understanding of danger or any sense of self-awareness in situations like these. If you were facing such words as these from your Sensei, under these sort of conditions, you would be quaking in your boots.

Perhaps all the genius talk of Sasuke's youth was merely a fluke of luck coupled with a rare and poorly understood ability. The thought gives you pause, and it causes your brain to seriously consider it—perhaps Sasuke is just an overpowered idiot. It would certainly explain a lot of things.

* * *

 

As you and Kakashi walk towards your parents' house to get Akihito, you loop your arm around his waist and he wraps an arm around your shoulders. You feel the tiny shocks of his lightning based chakra nature sliding along the chakra network in your arm and almost suggest sprinting home just for his sake. Kakashi has reached a healthy maturity in his chakra network, and he has disciplined himself to the point where he is at the borderline of a condition called 'overabundance.' Neither the condition nor his own symptoms of it are a problem, just that if he is a little too mentally engaged with something he is quite likely to almost crackle with chakra.

"I hope they grow up normal Sakura, our kids. I want them to be good at whatever they want to do, or to love it," he doesn't slow very much in his almost brisk walk, keeping pace with you, but his words are slow, obviously quite thought out. You almost find words to match his before he starts again, but aren't quick enough.

"I'm glad that the world we're all fighting for, _have_ been fighting for, will hopefully be a peaceful one by the time they are grown. They won't lose an eye, or a best friend, they won't feel obligated to become world-class medics just to keep their team alive. I want that, I want that for Aki, and for the new stowaway." You growl and almost hit him for that, but it's such a heartwarming thought, idea, that you can't bring yourself to do violence to your husband. Besides, it's your anniversary and he _remembered_ of all things—and of course, there's the whole 'just-been-patched-up-still-limping-around,' thing.

* * *

 

In the end your testimony as well as the repeated testimony of Sasuke's ANBU interrogators has the Uchiha brat put to death. His eyes were removed and stored for testing as well as just for posterity, though his body was thoroughly destroyed by ANBU operatives after his execution. You had been summoned, as Hound not as Kakashi, to oversee his death and bodily destruction. He had gone out spitting curses at Konoha, and you had never been more glad to see a man die.

The trial had dragged into your personal life, that you had perhaps been more vicious or vindictive towards Sasuke because of Sakura's childhood obsession with him, or that you were just a new father trying to protect your child. Weeks before the trial had ended you began to dream of just breaking into Sasuke's cell and murdering him to end all of the fuss and trouble he had started. You were so mentally drained by it that you had agreed to Sakura's wish to see the condemned Uchiha shortly before the young man's death. You _hadn't_ been so mentally worn down as to let her go _alone_ , but you are going to have to deal with the nightmares your overactive imagination came up with as you mentally researched the worst-case scenarios of the visit. You're going to have to deal with those nightmares for probably the rest of your life.

But he is finally dead, and with his death hopefully the Uchiha clan will die away and never return. Sure, Itachi is still running around, but the rumors in ANBU are that he's going blind, has been since before he left Konoha. Twenty six is getting up there in years if one is a blind S-class nukenin, and the latest info on the Akatsuki is that they are cleaning up their ranks and weeding out the weak shinobi from their recruits.

All Konoha has left of the Uchiha clan are three eyeballs, one belonging originally to Uchiha Obito, and two plucked out of the head of Uchiha Sasuke. One is still fully functional as a tool for the village, the others are going to storage. Hopefully to stay that way.


	21. His Real Face

The first time you saw Kakashi's face was not the first time that he took his mask down. He had, that first time, tentatively taken the black fabric down to scrunch at his neck so that he could eat properly, which had initially surprised you, you'd expected him to be a big baby about it. You'd gotten him dinner—no tempura, for a reason you only discovered a year into your relationship—as he wallowed in the hospital, and the two of you had dinner together for the first time in this new something the two of you had worked out. That was when you first saw the vicious scar which drew down his throat, across his carotid, and down even a little farther than you could see at the time.

The face which you saw that evening, sitting crosslegged on his hospital bed across from him, was fascinating, with the few scars you'd never seen before, a light dusting of highly faded freckles across the bridge of his nose, and an odd tanline left by the masks he constantly wore—somehow you had never thought that the sun would affect him, but here was the evidence, plain as day.

But this face wasn't Kakashi's, somehow you knew that. He was not himself, he was as aloof as he nearly always was. You hadn't pressed the issue, since at least you knew what he looked like now. It was a start. It wasn't the best start, but at least forced him to pay you the respect of at least pretending to be human with the black fabric off. You stopped scheming to see his face that evening too, because it seemed it would need to be a "time is right," situation which would bring out the real Kakashi. The one that you knew, the one that you wanted. You just wanted that man to be around you without the mask. So you decide to wait.

You wait for weeks, going on dates and walks around the village and quick spars in the forest. Kakashi starts to warm to the idea of being in a relationship with you, and he begins to act a little more sweetly to you—nothing saccharine such as Gai's flowery speeches, which still creep you out, does the man have a _thing_ for Kakashi or something?—in subtle ways. Like, after asking you to take care of his plant as he goes on a long mission, leaving a cheery (and slightly cheeky) love note in Mr. Ukki's leaves. Nothing anyone could ever catch him at or pin him down with, but there nonetheless.

It is when he kisses you the first time that you see his face, his real face.

He has just come back from a mission, completely exhausted, and his Sharingan apparently trying to burrow into his brain in search of chakra. Genma managed, with Shizune's help to strap him down for the return home and you are there unbinding his limbs so that you can move him to a proper bed—likely only to rebind them, he needs to just sleep off this chakra exhaustion after you treat his eye, and tying him to the bed is usually the best way to make him do that. When his arms are free and you are about to until his feet, Kakashi reaches up and grabs your head. He's gotten his mask down at some point, and as he moves in for a kiss you see him.

This man is the man who wears the mask, a sweet, introverted, highly paranoid, gentle, but often serious man. He is also the man you want, the one you have been waiting for since you got him to agree to start seeing you three months ago. This man is the one you want to grow old with.

Not Naruto, who is not your brother in your mind but something like it. Not Sai, who would have been a social idiot even if he hadn't been in ROOT, he just has a handy excuse. And, poor Lee, not Lee, because Lee didn't make you feel supported. If you had merely been after a man who would love and cherish you, who would drop everything in his world to protect yours, you would have never broken up with Lee. You would have married him, or a man like him. But Kakashi is the one for you—because he supports your decisions, he lets you into his life and expects that you let him into yours. And those lives are connected, on even footing. Lee offered blind devotion, a willing acceptance of your violently short temper and your long hours of training to maintain your strength and your medical skills—the young man had even offered to allow you to test poisons and antidotes out on him—but Kakashi offers mutual respect and companionship, and he only puts up with your temper if he feels like it's warranted, otherwise he asks quick, cutting questions which resolve your moods faster than letting you work through your volatile emotions on your own.

It is not that he wouldn't drop everything in his world to protect yours—you've seen him nearly get himself killed to protect his teammates—but it is that he doesn't assume that your world needs protecting of that magnitude. He doesn't think that you are a helpless girl playing at being a kunoichi; instead he _knows_ that you are a kunoichi who _rarely_ slips into the behavior of a helpless girl.

So as he anchors shaking hands—likely from chakra exhaustion rather than emotion in all honesty—in your hair and lifts himself and brings your lips down to meet his own, you know that this face near yours is Kakashi's. This is one of those sweet things he does for you, to show a growing devotion to you which is completely him. Because shortly after you kiss him back, his shaking hands go slack and his lips fall away as he passes out.

There is no sulk to your wry expression as you free his feet from the gurney and move him to his hospital bed with no assistance from the attending medics. It is enough that you are the person he forced himself to keep conscious for, and it is enough that, with the last energy he had before losing consciousness, he decided to kiss you rather than just apologize for being a bother. You just might love this man.


End file.
